Quality of life at home and satisfaction of patients after enhanced recovery protocol for colorectal surgery.

Background: Quality of life of patients at home after an enhanced recovery protocol (ERP) for surgery has been least studied especially in elderly patients.

Methods: Our first 41 patients entered in the colorectal GRACE database were interviewed through telephone about their postoperative stress, fatigue, pain, difficulty in feeding, home autonomy, and satisfaction. We compared the responses of the elderly patients (>70 years, n = 19) with those of the younger patients.

Results: The time between the surgery and the questionnaire was 79 ± 48 days. Early return was experienced as stressful by ±20% of the patients. Fatigue and pain were low (respectively: simple numerical scale [SNS] = 4.2 ± 3.2 and 2.5 ± 2.9). When present, pain was relieved by the prescribed treatment. One-third of the patients described some difficulty in feeding. Fifty percent of the patients felt completely autonomous when returned at home, 80% attributed the rapid recovery of autonomy to the ERP. Finally, 87% were globally satisfied (SNS: 8.5 ± 1.0). The characteristics of the 'elderly' group (77 ± 6 years) and their questionnaire responses were similar to those of the younger patients.

Conclusions: Despite some limitations (retrospective, different time between surgery and the telephone survey), our study suggests that quality of life at home after ERP for colorectal surgery is very satisfactory for over 80% of patients. Furthermore, this study confirms that elderly patients benefit from an ERP for colorectal surgery like younger patients.