Publications by authors named "Franco Carli"

Article Synopsis
  • Esophageal adenocarcinoma has a high rate of complications and deaths, but prehabilitation—which includes exercise, nutrition, and mental health support—has not been widely studied for these patients.
  • A study from August 2019 to February 2023 examined the feasibility of prehabilitation during treatment and compared supervised versus home-based exercises in patients undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
  • Results showed high recruitment and compliance rates in both groups, with significant improvements in physical activities, cardiorespiratory fitness, and quality of life, suggesting that prehabilitation can be beneficial and viable for esophageal cancer patients.
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Background: As the population ages, more older adults are presenting for surgery. Age-related declines in physiological reserve and functional capacity can result in frailty and poor outcomes after surgery. Hence, optimizing perioperative care in older patients is imperative.

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Prehabilitation aims to optimise patients' physical and psychological status before treatment. The types of outcomes measured to assess the impact of prehabilitation interventions vary across clinical research and service evaluation, limiting the ability to compare between studies and services and to pool data. An international workshop involving academic and clinical experts in cancer prehabilitation was convened in May 2022 at Sheffield Hallam University's Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, England.

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Article Synopsis
  • Frailty, malnutrition, and sarcopenia significantly increase health risks for patients before and after liver transplantation (LT), leading researchers to explore the potential benefits of prehabilitation (exercise training) for these individuals.* -
  • The scoping review examined various studies (from 1946 to November 2023) focusing on the feasibility and safety of prehabilitation for LT candidates, ultimately including six heterogeneous studies with small sample sizes and varying outcomes.* -
  • Results indicated that prehabilitation is generally safe and feasible, with most studies reporting improvements in physical fitness metrics; however, further high-quality research is essential to better understand its impact on patients undergoing liver transplantation.*
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Background: Multimodal prehabilitation is a promising adjunct to the current surgical treatment pathway for colorectal cancer patients to further improve postoperative outcomes, especially for high-risk patients with low functional capacity. The aim of the present study was to test the effect of prehabilitation on immediate postoperative recovery.

Method: The study was designed as a RCT with two arms (intervention and control).

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Cancer symptoms negatively affect health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with cancer awaiting liver resection. Prehabilitation maintained HRQoL after surgery. Future studies should test whether relieving cancer symptoms can improve HRQoL.

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Prehabilitation is an intervention that occurs between cancer diagnosis and the start of an acute treatment. It involves physical, nutritional, and psychological assessments to establish a baseline functional level and provide targeted interventions to improve a person's health and prevent future impairments. Prehabilitation has been applied to surgical oncology and has shown positive results at improving functional capacity, reducing hospital stay, decreasing complications, and enhancing health-related quality of life.

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We examined the effectiveness of dietary counseling performed within a trimodal prehabilitation study for patients with cancer awaiting hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) surgery. Additionally, we explored relationships between nutritional status and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The dietary intervention aimed to achieve a protein intake of 1.

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Cancer and surgery represent a major stress on the human body. Any condition that prevents patients from tolerating the physiological stress is a risk factor for poor outcome. There is a need to identify these impairments early in the process with a simple screening, followed by assessments that provide a holistic picture of the patient.

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Purpose: This article focuses on the following:The importance of prehabilitation in people with cancer and the known and hypothesised benefits.Exploration of the principles that can be used when developing services in the absence of a single accepted model of how these services could be established or configured.Description of approaches and learning in the development and implementation of prehabilitation across three different countries: Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, based on the authors' experiences and perspectives.

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Background: Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) and prehabilitation programs are evidence-based and patient-focused, yet meaningful patient input could further enhance these interventions to produce superior patient outcomes and patient experiences. We conducted a qualitative study with patients who had undergone colorectal surgery under ERAS care to determine how they prepared for surgery, their views on prehabilitation and how prehabilitation could be delivered to best meet patient needs.

Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with adult patients who had undergone colorectal surgery under ERAS care within 3 months after surgery.

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Background: Complications are common after colorectal surgery and remain a target for quality improvement. Lower preoperative physical functioning is associated with poor postoperative outcomes, but assessment often relies on subjective judgment or resource-intensive tests. Recent literature suggests that self-reported functional capacity, measured using the Duke Activity Status Index (DASI), is a strong predictor of postoperative outcomes.

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Early oral feeding is the preferred mode of nutrition for surgical patients. Avoidance of any nutritional therapy bears the risk of underfeeding during the postoperative course after major surgery. Considering that malnutrition and underfeeding are risk factors for postoperative complications, early enteral feeding is especially relevant for any surgical patient at nutritional risk, especially for those undergoing upper gastrointestinal surgery.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Advances in cancer survivorship focus on person-centered care, improving patient experiences throughout their treatment and recovery journey.
  • - Research has expanded on prehabilitation, which involves pre-treatment strategies aimed at reducing the negative effects of cancer therapies, mainly in surgical settings but now also applied to other treatment types.
  • - The authors suggest a multiphasic approach to prehabilitation, catering to different cancer treatment journeys and promoting a broad definition of what it means to be a cancer survivor.
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Purpose Of Review: The major components of ERAS attenuate the inflammatory response and modulate metabolism in direction of sparing body protein and preserving function. However, these perioperative interventions might have limited effectiveness on postoperative outcomes if preoperative risk factors are not addressed and optimized.

Recent Findings: The preoperative metabolic perturbations characterized by insulin resistance and sarcopenia might predispose patients to a higher degree of postoperative catabolism.

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Objective: To estimate the extent to which staff-directed facilitation of early mobilization impacts recovery of pulmonary function and 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) after colorectal surgery.

Summary Background Data: Early mobilization after surgery is believed to improve pulmonary function and prevent PPCs; however, adherence is low. The value of allocating resources (eg, staff time) to increase early mobilization is unknown.

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Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is a model of care that was introduced in the late 1990s by a group of surgeons in Europe. The model consists of a number of evidence-based principles that support better outcomes for surgical patients, including improved patient experience, reduced length of stay in hospital, decreased complication rates and fewer hospital readmissions. A number of Canadian surgical care teams have already adopted ERAS principles and have reported positive outcomes.

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The enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) pathway is an evidence-based approach to the use of care elements along the patient perioperative pathway. All care elements that may impact on clinically relevant outcomes have been considered and reviewed. The combined ERAS actions allow a quicker return to bowel function, oral feeding, nutritional and metabolic equilibrium, normal activity and ultimately to achieve better outcomes.

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Introduction: Several grading schemes are available to assess surgical complications, but their relationship with patient-reported outcomes is not well understood. Therefore, our objective was to examine the effect of two complication grading schemas on health-related quality of life in colorectal surgery patients.

Methods: An analysis of adult patients undergoing elective colorectal surgery from 2005 to 2013 was performed.

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Introduction: Treatment delay may have detrimental effects on cancer outcomes. The impact of longer delays on colorectal cancer outcomes remains poorly described. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of delays to curative-intent surgical resection on survival in colorectal cancer patients.

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Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of prehabilitation on survival after colorectal cancer surgery.

Summary Of Background Data: Preoperative multimodal exercise and nutritional programs (prehabilitation) improve functional capacity and recovery following colorectal surgery. Exercise may also affect cancer outcomes by mediating the systemic inflammatory response.

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Background: Physical activity via early mobilization after surgery is recommended to help reduce the risk of postoperative adverse effects and to improve recovery. We explored whether prehabilitation is associated with differences in physical activity during the postoperative inpatient stay and the week after discharge in men undergoing abdominal surgery.

Methods: This study was a pre-planned secondary analysis of a larger randomized controlled trial of home-based exercise prehabilitation versus control for men undergoing radical prostatectomy.

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