Please note, if you attended this session at the 2019 Annual Meeting in Portland and claimed CE for the live session, you cannot also get CE for the recorded session.

Presented by: Josef Niebauer, MD, PhD, MBA, Jonathan Myers, PhD, FAACVPR & Reed Humphrey, PhD, MAACVPR

Poor functional capacity is among the most powerful predictors of adverse outcomes following a wide variety of surgical interventions, and recent studies have demonstrated that optimizing functional capacity prior to a surgical intervention results in markedly improved post-surgical outcomes, both in the short and long-term. This has led to the concept of “prehabilitation”, a term that has been used in recent years to describe the process of enhancing a patient’s functional capabilities in order to withstand a stressful event. Prehabilitation, consisting of 4 to 8 week programs of exercise intervention prior to surgical or other interventions, has been widely employed in recent years in Europe where there is a much greater emphasis on prevention and rehabilitation relative to the United States. Enhancing physical function through prehabilitation has been demonstrated to improve risk stratification and outcomes among patients undergoing cardiac and non-cardiac surgery, abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, hepatic transplantation, lung cancer resection, upper gastrointestinal surgery, intra-abdominal surgery, bariatric surgery, and coronary artery bypass grafting. These studies have consistently demonstrated that enhancing physical function through programs of prehabilitation has a considerable impact on improving a wide range of outcomes including morbidity and mortality related to surgery. In this breakout session, we will introduce the attendees to the concept of prehabilitation, discuss how it complements cardiac rehabilitation, and strategies to implement prehabilitation in the context of cardiac rehabilitation programs. Chair – Barry Franklin, PhD Overview of Prehabilitation and Outcomes. Jonathan Myers, PhD The Important Elements in Optimizing Pre-Surgical Fitness Reed Humphrey, PhD Strategies to Improve Fitness Prior to an Intervention Josef Niebauer, MD PhD MBA

Learning Objectives:

1. Attendees will recognize the concept of prehabilitation and be able to identify who may be a good candidate.
2. Attendees will learn about benefits for subsequent procedural risk, morbidity and mortality in cardiovascular diseases.
3. Attendees will llearn how to implement prehabilitation into programs of cardiac rehabilitation.

Viewing window: 60 days from date of purchaseProduct includes: presentation recording, handouts, post test, evaluation, and CE certificate.