Elements not Graded in the Cardiac Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Guidelines Might Improve Postoperative Outcome: A Comprehensive Narrative Review

Abstract

Enhanced Recovery Programs (ERPs) are protocols involving the whole patient surgical journey. These protocols are based on multimodal, multidisciplinary, evidence-based, and patient-centered approaches aimed at improving patient recovery after a surgical intervention. Such programs have shown striking positive results in different surgical specialties. However, only a few research groups have incorporated preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative evidence-based interventions in bundles used to standardize care and build cardiac surgery ERPs. The Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Society recently published evidence-based recommendations for perioperative care in cardiac surgery. Their recommendations included 22 perioperative interventions that may be part of any cardiac ERP. However, various components integrated in already-published cardiac ERPs were neither graded nor reported in these recommendations. The goals of the current review are to present published cardiac ERPs and their effects on patient outcomes and reported components incorporated into these ERPs and to discuss the objectives and scope of cardiac ERPs.

Keywords: Cardiac Enhanced Recovery Programs; cardiac prehabilitation; enhanced recovery after cardiac surgery.