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. 2023 Dec 1:10:1281843.
doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1281843. eCollection 2023.

Prehabilitation programs - a systematic review of the economic evidence

Yuhe Ke #  1 , Roderica Rui Ge Ng #  1 , Shalini Elangovan  2 , Yun Hao Leong  1 , Zhao Han Goh  1 , Nicholas Graves  2 , Nicholas B Shannon  3   4 , Hairil Rizal Abdullah  1   2
Affiliations

Prehabilitation programs - a systematic review of the economic evidence

Yuhe Ke et al. Front Med (Lausanne). .

Abstract

Introduction: Prehabilitation, which involves improving a patient's physical and psychological condition before surgery, has shown potential benefits but has yet to be extensively studied from an economic perspective. To address this gap, a systematic review was conducted to summarize existing economic evaluations of prehabilitation interventions.

Methods: The PRISMA Protocols 2015 checklist was followed. Over 16,000 manuscripts were reviewed, and 99 reports on preoperative interventions and screening tests were identified, of which 12 studies were included in this analysis. The costs are expressed in Pounds (GBP, £) and adjusted for inflation to December 2022.

Results: The studies were conducted in Western countries, focusing on specific surgical subspecialties. While the interventions and study designs varied, most studies demonstrated cost savings in the intervention group compared to the control group. Additionally, all cost-effectiveness analysis studies favored the intervention group. However, the review also identified several limitations. Many studies had a moderate or high risk of bias, and critical information such as time horizons and discount rates were often missing. Important components like heterogeneity, distributional effects, and uncertainty were frequently lacking as well. The misclassification of economic evaluation types highlighted a lack of knowledge among physicians in prehabilitation research.

Conclusion: This review reveals a lack of robust evidence regarding the economics of prehabilitation programs for surgical patients. This suggests a need for further research with rigorous methods and accurate definitions.

Keywords: cost and cost analysis; economic evaluation; perioperative optimization; prehabilitation; preoperative care.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
PRISMA flow diagram. A total of 12 studies were included in the final analysis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Risk of bias assessment based on version 2 of the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials (RoB 2).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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