Prehabilitation improving the fitness of patients for surgery Standard Page

Title: Preparing For Surgery: The Community Prehabilitation and Wellbeing Project (The PREP-WELL Project)

Funder: The Health Foundation – Innovating for Improvement

DSER staff: Dr Garry Tew

Collaborators: Dr Joanne Gray, Northumbria University; South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Public Health (Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland), South Tees Clinical Commissioning Group, University of York

Overview: Adverse lifestyle choices such as sedentary behaviour, poor diet, smoking and hazardous drinking are associated with poor outcomes following surgery, reduced longer-term survival and increased healthcare costs. Through this quality improvement project, we plan to introduce a new, community-based service for patients preoperatively, to capitalise on the ‘teachable moment’ of impending surgery to encourage behaviour modification. We will use validated comprehensive assessments to create supervised patient-centred management plans around lifestyle and education. The aim is to help patients to improve their fitness for surgery and achieve meaningful long-term lifestyle benefits.

• Project website
• University webpage

Banerjee, S., Manley, K., Shaw, B., Lewis, L., Cucato, G., Mills, R., ... & Saxton, J. M. (2018). Vigorous intensity aerobic interval exercise in bladder cancer patients prior to radical cystectomy: a feasibility randomised controlled trial. Supportive Care in Cancer, 26(5), 1515-1523. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/32697/

Tew, G. A., Ayyash, R., Durrand, J., & Danjoux, G. R. (2018). Clinical guideline and recommendations on pre‐operative exercise training in patients awaiting major non‐cardiac surgery. Anaesthesia, 73(6), 750-768. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/32528/

Tew, G. A., Batterham, A. M., Colling, K., Gray, J., Kerr, K., Kothmann, E., ... & Danjoux, G. (2017). Randomized feasibility trial of high‐intensity interval training before elective abdominal aortic aneurysm repair. British Journal of Surgery, 104(13), 1791-1801. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/31345/

Weston, M., Batterham, A. M., Tew, G. A., Kothmann, E., Kerr, K., Nawaz, S., ... & Danjoux, G. (2017). Patients awaiting surgical repair for large abdominal aortic aneurysms can exercise at moderate to hard intensities with a low risk of adverse events. Frontiers in physiology, 7, 684. http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/28975/