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Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programme versus conventional perioperative care in patients undergoing major intra-abdominal surgical procedures

  • Clinical Study
  • Published:
Hellenic Journal of Surgery

Abstract

Aim-Background

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programmes have been applied mainly in patients undergoing major lower gastrointestinal surgery, to attenuate stress response to surgery and enable rapid recovery. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the implementation of ERAS care, as compared to traditional care, is associated with less morbidity (decreased incidence of major postoperative complications) and improved outcome in patients undergoing elective major upper and lower intra-abdominal surgery.

Methods

The patients of two individual surgeons following the ERAS regime were prospectively studied over 6 months and compared with the patients of the other 4 surgeons in the department who followed conventional perioperative care during the same period of time. The outcome measures included incidence of major postoperative complications, length of postoperative hospital stay, number of relaparotomies, number of readmissions, and mortality within 30 days of surgery. Data analysis was performed by the use of Fisher’s exact test and Student’s t-test.

Results

Sixteen patients treated in accordance with the ERAS programme were compared against 38 controls that received conventional postoperative care. The two groups were similar in terms of age, gender, ASA grade, types of disease and surgery. The ERAS group showed significantly lower morbidity compared to the control group (12.5% vs. 42.1% respectively; p=0.052). Length of stay was significantly shorter in the ERAS group (5 ± 1.6 days vs. 12.2 ± 5.9 days; p<0.00001). There was no difference in readmission rate, relaparotomy rate and mortality between the two groups.

Conclusion

The ERAS programme displays a trend toward a significantly lower incidence of postoperative complications and considerably reduces the length of hospital stay in patients undergoing major elective upper and lower intra-abdominal surgery.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, “Agios Andreas” General Hospital, Tsertidou 1 str., Patra, Greece

    V. Alivizatos, P. Athanasopoulos, V. Gavala & N. Apostolopoulos

Authors
  1. V. Alivizatos
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  2. P. Athanasopoulos
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  3. V. Gavala
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  4. N. Apostolopoulos
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Correspondence to V. Alivizatos.

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Alivizatos, V., Athanasopoulos, P., Gavala, V. et al. Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programme versus conventional perioperative care in patients undergoing major intra-abdominal surgical procedures. Hellenic J Surg 85, 85–90 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13126-013-0015-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13126-013-0015-7

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