Photo Credit: Herraez

Exercise and nutritional prehabilitation, as well as multicomponent interventions involving exercise, may be beneficial for adults undergoing surgery, according to a review published in The BMJ. Daniel I. McIsaac, MD, MPH, and colleagues estimated the relative efficacy of individual and combinations of prehabilitation components (exercise, nutrition, cognitive, and psychosocial) on postoperative complications, length of stay (LOS), HRQOL, and physical recovery for adults undergoing surgery across 186 trials with 15,684 participants. Isolated exercise, isolated nutritional, and combined exercise, nutrition, plus psychosocial prehabilitation were most likely to reduce complications compared with usual care when comparing treatments via meta-analysis (ORs, 0.50, 0.62, and 0.64, respectively). Combined exercise and psychosocial, combined exercise and nutrition, isolated exercise, and isolated nutritional prehabilitation were most likely to reduce LOS (−2.44, −1.22, −0.93, and −0.99 days, respectively). The prehabilitation most likely to improve HRQOL and physical recovery was combined exercise, nutrition, and psychosocial prehabilitation. Exercise and nutrition were the individual components most likely to improve all outcomes.