ASO Author Reflections: Please Walk at Least 5000 Steps per Day before Major Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) Surgeries for Malignancy

Excerpt

Daily physical activity has been shown to have an impact on short-term recovery after surgery for colorectal cancer and breast cancer.1,2 However, these studies only evaluated physical activity by an interview, thus the obtained data were subjective and not scientifically relevant. It may be better to evaluate patients’ daily physical activity by more objective methods. Therefore, in this study, we asked patients to carry a pedometer whenever they woke up, and objectively measured their daily physical activity. To date, no studies have investigated the importance of daily physical activity before surgery in terms of short-term outcomes after major HPB surgery, which is accompanied by a higher rate of postoperative complications compared with surgery for colorectal or breast cancer. Therefore, in our study, we selected only patients undergoing highly invasive HPB surgery for malignancy.3 We calculated the average daily steps per day and used a cut-off value of 5000 steps per day to dichotomize patients with poor and good physical activity. …