Enhanced Recovery Programme

How does Ooesophago-gastric (OG) cancer affect patients?

For OG patients, surgery is a major life event with a high risk of complications, such as pneumonia, and increased post-surgery frailty. To tackle this, we funded a team at St Mary's Hospital to co-design and deliver a new 'Enhanced Recovery Programme' (ERP) with patients for patients called 'PREPARE for Surgery'. 

About the ERP Programme

The Brian Turley Award winning programme is a collaborative intervention by two specialist OG cancer surgery centres within Imperial Healthcare Trust for patients undergoing oesophago-gastric surgery. The aim was to improve patients' surgical outcomes in relation to their physical and mental well-being prior to and after their surgery. The programme delivers this by improving early mobilisation rates, removing nasal-gastric tubes (for feeding) and drains (inserted during surgery) as early as possible to aid patients' recovery and reduce post-surgery complications. Each patient receives a personalised programme to match their individual needs, abilities and goals.

What happened?

The following improvements were made:

Site A Patients' mobilisation rates improved from 51% to 68% Hospital acquired pneumonia rates fell from 46 - 37% Length of stay reduced from 17 - 16 days

Site B Patients' mobilisation rates improved from 38% to 69% Hospital acquired pneumonia rates fell from 47 - 21% Length of stay reduced from 12.5 - 9  days

PREPARE for Surgery Journey