Nutritional prehabilitation strategies in abdominal surgery

Many patients undergoing abdominal surgery are considered at-risk of malnutrition and may have a multitude of modifiable risk factors for adverse surgical outcomes. Prior to surgery, risk factors should be identified and mitigated via prehabilitation. This review aims to highlight recent research in nutritional screening, assessment and interventions being incorporated into surgical prehabilitation programmes.

Nutritional screening identifies at-risk patients most likely to benefit from prehabilitation. Assessment of body composition using radiological methods provides an integrated accurate means of risk stratification, allowing intervention in those most likely to benefit. Biochemical immune-nutrition prognostic markers may provide a useful adjunct but lack robust clinical evidence. Unimodal nutritional prehabilitation interventions have mixed evidence of benefit in improving clinical outcomes, such as infectious complications and length of stay. Multimodal interventions are considered more pragmatic and may positively impact functional outcomes and reduce complication rates.

Utilizing nutrition as part of multimodal prehabilitation shows promise for improving clinical and functional outcomes yet requires strong collaboration between key stakeholders. Significant heterogeneity in study designs and patient characteristics renders difficulties in establishing the most efficacious approaches. Further research is required to determine optimal strategies and the cost effectiveness of such programmes.