If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.”
– Alice in Wonderland
Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS®), “fast-track surgery,” or optimized perioperative care (OPC) is an evidence-based perioperative clinical pathway developed to accelerate functional recovery of surgical patients.1 The goal of OPC is to reduce the incidence of postoperative symptoms and non-surgical complications through the use of minimally invasive surgical techniques, multimodal opioid-sparing pain management strategies, optimized fluid therapy, and adjustment of surgical care principles (question routine use of tubes and drains) and enhanced nursing care practices incorporating early mobilization and oral feeding. Furthermore, these changes to surgical care practices have been shown to accelerate functional recovery, increase patient satisfaction and safety after discharge with no increase in re-admission rates or post-discharge complications, and reduce the length of hospital stay. In addition to immediate postoperative benefits, an OPC program has been shown to...
