Enhanced Recovery After Emergency Surgery: Utopia or Reality?

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) constitutes the application of a series of perioperative measures based on the evidence, in order to achieve a better recovery of the patient and a decrease of the complications and the mortality. These ERAS programs initially proved their advantages in the field of colorectal surgery being progressively adopted by other surgical areas within the general surgery and other surgical specialties. The main excluding factor for the application of such programs has been the urgent clinical presentation, which has caused that despite the large volume of existing literature on ERAS in elective surgery, there are few studies that have investigated the effectiveness of these programs in surgical patients in emergencies. The aim of this article is to show ERAS measures currently available according to the existing evidence for emergency surgery.