Rasika Hendahewa
university of Queensland, Australia
Title: Enhance recovery after surgery-the way forward in colorectal surgery
Biography
Biography: Rasika Hendahewa
Abstract
Enhance recovery after Surgery (ERAS) or ‘fast track’ pathways is a multidisciplinary approach to patients undergoing colorectal surgery design to improve the quality of overall care by expediting the recovery and reducing the hospital stay. These pathways use existing evidence to streamline and standardize the perioperative management of patients to improve pain management to speed up the intestinal recovery to facilitate rapid discharge from hospital and thus to minimize overall complication rate, minimize health cost and improve patient satisfaction. The fast track protocols are evidence based and shown to positively influence the patient outcomes. The main Principles are to reduce the fasting time, optimize analgesic control, laparoscopic surgery, minimal use of drains and early postoperative feeding. We have been practicing ERAS since 2012 and our recent retrospective study revealed a reduce hospital length of stay for our patients by 1.42days. In contrast to previous studies our data reveals the benefit of ERAS even in elderly patient cohorts. The hospital facilities been on the continuous demand with ever increasing patients numbers ERAS is the way forward in colorectal surgery