Post-Surgery Steps and Prehabilitation Both Cut Complication Risks, Studies Show
Two studies show that every extra 1,000 daily steps after surgery lowers complication risk by 18%, while prehabilitation programs cut post-op complications by 48% and shorten hospital stays.
Two new studies published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons highlight the role of physical activity — both before and after surgery — in reducing postoperative complications and hospital stays. One study found that every extra 1,000 steps a patient takes daily after surgery lowers their odds of complications, while a separate review showed that prehabilitation programs involving exercise and nutrition cut post-op complications by nearly half.
In the first study, researchers tracked nearly 2,000 patients undergoing inpatient surgery who wore activity trackers. Results showed that each additional 1,000 steps per day after surgery was linked to 18% lower odds of complications, 16% lower odds of needing readmission to hospital, and 6% shorter hospital stays. These results held even after adjusting for factors like age, sex, and the level of surgical risk for each patient. The link between extra steps and better recovery applied across different types of procedures regardless of patients' overall health.
"We tell patients that they need to get up and walk after an operation, but we don't have a good sense of how much they're actually moving," senior researcher Dr. Timothy Pawlik, chair of surgery at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, said in a news release. "Wearables give us an objective, continuous readout. Instead of asking how you feel, we can see that you're up and moving, which is a very actionable signal of how your recovery is progressing."
The results align with a 2023 study which found that patients who took more than 7,500 steps per day prior to surgery had a 51% lower risk of complications after their procedure.
The second study, a review of 23 prior clinical trials involving more than 2,100 patients, found that prehabilitation programs reduced post-op complications by 48% and shortened hospital stays by 11%. Exercise-based programs appeared more effective than nutrition-focused ones: patients who underwent exercise prehabilitation were 55% less likely to suffer complications, while nutrition programs did not significantly reduce complication risk. However, nutrition programs were associated with 14% shorter hospital stays compared to standard care.
"These findings support the value of prehabilitation programs in optimizing health for patients, especially those who are at high risk of facing complications or who may benefit from extra support before undergoing surgery," senior researcher Dr. Justine Lee, associate chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a news release.
Exercise-based programs were most often used in orthopedic surgery, while nutrition programs were primarily used in gastrointestinal and heart surgeries. Researchers noted that future studies should focus on making prehabilitation programs more widely available by standardizing protocols and reducing barriers like cost and insurance coverage.