Enhanced Recovery After Surgery: A Narrative Review of its Application in Cardiac Surgery

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is a perioperative patient management strategy that is being adopted rapidly across surgical specialties worldwide. Components of ERAS work collaboratively throughout the perioperative course to achieve significant benefits for both the patient and the entire health care system. The use of ERAS in cardiac surgery (ERAS-C) could lead to similar improvements, but currently, use of ERAS-C programs is lacking and not well defined.

A literature search was performed of the Medline database to capture relevant studies discussing ERAS-C. Key concepts were extracted from these articles and grouped according to appropriate perioperative stages. Supporting literature was also included, briefly discussing the historical progression of cardiac surgery to enhanced recovery pathways, potential limitations to these pathways in cardiac surgery, and the first studies evaluating the use of an ERAS program with cardiac surgery patients.

Initial results of ERAS-C studies have shown similar benefits to those of other surgical fields, including decreased hospital and intensive care unit lengths of stay (1-4 days and 4-20 hours, respectively), improved perioperative pain control (25%-60% decreased opioid usage), and improvements in early postoperative mobility and oral diets. Results especially beneficial to cardiac surgery have also been reported, such as an 8% to 14% decreased incidence of postoperative atrial fibrillation.

This review presents pertinent current research related to the implementation of ERAS programs in the field of cardiac surgery and provides a call to action for further investigation and adaption of ERAS in cardiac surgery.