Effectiveness of early rehabilitation following aortic surgery: a nationwide inpatient database study

Exercise immediately after aortic surgery is controversial with limited evidence. The present study aimed to assess whether early rehabilitation commencing within 3 days of aortic surgery improves physical functions at discharge more than usual care in patients after aortic surgery.

We used the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination database, a nationwide inpatient database from more than 1600 acute care hospitals that covers approximately 75% of all intensive care unit (ICU) beds in Japan. We identified patients who underwent open or endovascular aortic surgery and were admitted to the ICU between July 2010 and March 2018. Patients beginning rehabilitation within 3 days of aortic surgery were defined as the early rehabilitation group and the remaining patients as the usual care group. We used inverse probability of treatment weighting analyses to compare outcomes between the two groups.

Among 121,024 eligible patients, there were 44,746 (37.0%) in the early rehabilitation group and 76,278 (63.0%) in the usual care group. In inverse probability of treatment weighting analyses, Barthel index scores at discharge were significantly higher in the early rehabilitation group than in the usual care group (difference, 4.0; 95% confidence interval, 2.8-5.2). The early rehabilitation group had significantly lower in-hospital mortality, lower total hospitalization costs, shorter ICU stay, and shorter hospital stay than the usual care group.

Early rehabilitation within 3 days of aortic surgery was associated with improved physical functions at discharge, shorter ICU and hospital stays, and lower hospitalization costs without increased mortality.