Pragmatic Prehabilitation for Colorectal Surgery

NCT04247776 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: REB18-0979
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 110
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Colorectal surgery is a common surgery for the treatment of colon and rectal cancers as well as other bowel diseases. Recovery from colorectal surgery is difficult because of the many potential negative side effects. These side effects include surgical complications, infections, and long hospital stays. It usually takes several months for patients to recover the strength required to return to their typical daily activities. The Enhanced Recovery After Surgery program was established in Alberta in 2013 and uses several strategies to improve short-term patient recovery, including earlier discharge from hospital. Whether the ERAS program also improves long-term patient recovery, including quality of life and return to activities of daily living, is unclear. Whether the ERAS program would benefit from the addition of a prehabilitation element is unclear. Prehabilitation programs are designed to use the waiting period before colorectal surgery to better prepare patients emotionally and physically for their operation. To date, successful prehabilitation programs have used a personalized care strategy where each patient is provided specific care instructions by healthcare professionals to meet their unique exercise, nutrition, and psychological needs. This prehabilitation strategy has been criticized for not being sustainable in our healthcare system. A new prehabilitation program in response to this criticism is proposed. The prehabilitation program will be conducted in a more sustainable way by offering the program as a group class with a home-based component. ERAS patients at the Peter Lougheed Center are already offered a group class as part of the standard ERAS program. The prehabilitation class will be an extension of this group class that provides general nutrition, exercise, and anxiety-reduction/relaxation strategies to help patients prepare physically and emotionally for their operation. At this class, patients will learn to eat well, practice deep breathing exercises for relaxation, perform simple functional exercises, and to walk for exercise before their surgery. The surgical experience and outcomes of patients who received the additional prehabilitation care will be compared to those who received ERAS care only. The overall goal of the study is to better understand how ERAS supports recovery after surgery and whether a prehabilitation program offers any additional benefits to the ERAS program currently in place.

Conditions

Prehabilitation; Colorectal Surgery; Enhanced Recovery After Surgery

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Length of stay (LOS)

  Length of hospital stay

  from date of surgery until hospital discharge, recorded in days, and assessed up to 6 weeks post-surgery

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• Complications

  from date of surgery until 30 days post-surgery

Study Arms (2)

Prehab

EXPERIMENTAL

General nutrition, relaxation, and exercise instructions. Home-based functional exercises, Fitbit goals, and nutrition supplements.

Combination Product: Prehab; Other: ERAS; Behavioral: Fitbit

ERAS

ACTIVE COMPARATOR

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery standard of care plus Fitbit.

Other: ERAS; Behavioral: Fitbit

Interventions

Prehab COMBINATION_PRODUCT

Exercise: functional exercises, walking, Fitbit goals Nutrition: handout, supplements (protein, vitamins, minerals) Stress reduction: deep breathing

Prehab

ERAS OTHER

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery guidelines are applied.

ERAS; Prehab

Fitbit BEHAVIORAL

Fitbit is worn to monitor step counts.

ERAS; Prehab

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years - 100 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• years of age or older;
• elective colorectal surgery for primary disease under ERAS care at PLC;
• have at least two weeks to participate before their scheduled surgery (i.e., surgery will NOT be rescheduled based on participation in this program);
• are able to walk;
• sufficient fluency in English to complete questionnaires.

You may not qualify if:

• emergent surgery;
• dairy allergy;
• galactosemia;
• strict vegans;
• presence of a condition that could compromise the safety of the patient or adherence to the program, including
• Co-morbid medical, physical, and/or mental conditions including dementia, disabling orthopedic and neuromuscular disease, psychosis;
• Severe cardiopulmonary abnormalities, sepsis, and end-stage organ disease: cardiac failure (New York Heart Association classes III-IV), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, renal failure (creatinine \> 115µmol/l), hepatic failure (liver aminotranferases \>50% the normal range).

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Calgary: lead

Study Sites (1)

Peter Lougheed Center

Calgary, Alberta, T1Y 6J4, Canada

Location

Related Publications (4)

• Gillis C, Li C, Lee L, Awasthi R, Augustin B, Gamsa A, Liberman AS, Stein B, Charlebois P, Feldman LS, Carli F. Prehabilitation versus rehabilitation: a randomized control trial in patients undergoing colorectal resection for cancer. Anesthesiology. 2014 Nov;121(5):937-47. doi: 10.1097/ALN.0000000000000393.

  PMID: 25076007 BACKGROUND

• Gillis C, Fenton TR, Sajobi TT, Minnella EM, Awasthi R, Loiselle SE, Liberman AS, Stein B, Charlebois P, Carli F. Trimodal prehabilitation for colorectal surgery attenuates post-surgical losses in lean body mass: A pooled analysis of randomized controlled trials. Clin Nutr. 2019 Jun;38(3):1053-1060. doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2018.06.982. Epub 2018 Jul 9.

  PMID: 30025745 BACKGROUND

• Gillis C, Buhler K, Bresee L, Carli F, Gramlich L, Culos-Reed N, Sajobi TT, Fenton TR. Effects of Nutritional Prehabilitation, With and Without Exercise, on Outcomes of Patients Who Undergo Colorectal Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Gastroenterology. 2018 Aug;155(2):391-410.e4. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2018.05.012. Epub 2018 May 8.

  PMID: 29750973 BACKGROUND

• Gillis C, Hasil L, Keane C, Brassard D, Kiernan F, Bellafronte NT, Culos-Reed SN, Gramlich L, Ljungqvist O, Fenton TR. A multimodal prehabilitation class for Enhanced Recovery After Surgery: a pragmatic randomised type 1 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial. Br J Anaesth. 2025 Apr 7:S0007-0912(25)00153-9. doi: 10.1016/j.bja.2025.03.001. Online ahead of print.

  PMID: 40199628 DERIVED

Study Officials

• Chelsia Gillis, PhD(c)

  University of Calgary

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: PhD Candidate

Model Details: Pragmatic RCT Effectiveness- Implementation Hybrid

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: January 23, 2020
• First Posted: January 30, 2020
• Study Start: December 1, 2018
• Primary Completion: September 1, 2020
• Study Completion: May 1, 2021
• Last Updated: May 5, 2021

Record last verified: 2021-05

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

CA (1)