Advising your patients to undergo a "prehabilitation" program to prepare for surgery may help their recovery, a new study suggests.

The study, done by McGill University in Montreal, looked at 77 patients undergoing colorectal cancer surgery. Half of those patients were given a plan for 50 minutes of exercise 3 days a week by a kinesiologist, counseling and protein supplements from a dietician and anxiety-reducing exercises from a psychologist to follow pre-surgery. The group started following the program on average 25 days prior to their procedures. All of the patients then followed the same rehabilitation program after surgery.

At the start of the study, both groups were tested on how far they could walk in 6 minutes. All of the patients walked about the same distance in the first test; however, when the test was repeated immediately before surgery, patients in the prehab group walked significantly further than the rehab-only group. Two months after surgery, the rehab-only patients walked an average of 21.8 meters less than when they first started the study, while prehab patients walked 23.7 meters further.

"Prehabilitation prepares patients to withstand the stress of surgery so they are able to recover faster and function better after the procedure," says Francesco Carli, MD, MPhil, lead author of the study.

The study, published in November's issue of Anesthesiology, says that because there were three elements to the prehabilitation — relaxation exercises, aerobic exercises and diet — it's not immediately clear which ones caused the improvements. Researchers noted that both groups recovered fairly well from the surgery and that there were no differences in complication rates.

Kendal Gapinski