ASO Author Reflections: The Potential of ERAS in Standardizing Care for Patients Undergoing CRS–HIPEC

Excerpt

Since its introduction in 2005, Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) has become recognized worldwide across multiple surgical disciplines as a method to streamline all aspects of perioperative care. Using multimodal and multidisciplinary approaches, ERAS protocols have shown improved patient outcomes such as decreased complications and hospital lengths of stay, and have thus become widely adopted.¹ In contrast, no standard perioperative guidelines currently exist for patients undergoing cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS–HIPEC), due to both patient complexity (frequently pretreated with multiple lines of chemotherapy, prior cancer operations) and surgical complexity (multiple regions of disease requiring multivisceral resection). A handful of single-institution studies have reported promising outcomes after ERAS implementation in CRS–HIPEC, although the role of standardization and adherence to these protocols has not yet been explored. …