The effect of prehabilitation on long-term survival and hospital admissions in older patients undergoing elective colorectal cancer surgery

There is a growing body of evidence for a beneficial effect of prehabilitation on short-term outcomes after colorectal cancer (CRC) surgery in older patients. However, long-term effects on survival or hospital admissions have not been investigated. This study reports these long-term outcomes from a previously published observational cohort study. We compared patients ≥75 years who received elective CRC surgery in Reinier de Graaf Hospital before (2010–2013: standard care) and after implementation of a multimodal prehabilitation program (2014–2015; prehabilitation). With a six-year follow-up period, we analyzed survival using the Kaplan-Meier method and the occurrence of one or more hospital admissions using logistic regression analyses. Overall, 137 patients were included in the standard care group and 86 patients in the prehabilitation group. There were no differences in patients, tumor and treatment characteristics. After six years, 51.1% in the standard care group and 59.3% in the prehabilitation group (p = 0.167) were still alive. When corrected for confounders in the prehabilitation group less patients had one or more hospital admissions during follow-up (odds ratio (OR) 0.43 (95% CI 0.24–0.77). Unfortunately these limited historical cohorts did not allow for strong conclusions concerning long-time survival. However, after prehabilitation less patients had hospital admissions during follow up. Hopefully, this first study into the long-term effects of multimodal prehabilitation will trigger more future research.