Saw the consultant today, signed the consent form for the hysterectomy. She's ticked hysterectomy and also Other and written ERAS. Which I looked up and it means Enhanced Recovery After Surgery.
I wondered if anyone has any experience of ERAS? What did it entail? I'm having abdominal surgery so it's not going to be the operation that's part of it - i.e. not keyhole or vaginal. And general anaesthetic, not epidural. So I'm wondering what else it might involve?
Thanks Shewolf, I saw that info but just wondered if anyone has first hand experience.
Hi
I was given a leaflet by my medical team, prior to my surgery, about enhanced recovery. From memory I recall it including a carbohydrate drink (powder in a sachet to make up with water) to take the night before surgery and also before 6am on the day of the surgery; the drink was referred to as a 'preload' - in a nutshell it's purpose is to generally aid recovery. The programme also included the wearing of surgical stockings to help reduce the risk of blood clots; I had daily blood thinning injections after the surgery again to help prevent blood clots. The morning after my surgery (mine was keyhole) and immediately after breakfast a healthcare assistant appeared to get me up and walking asap and then to keep moving as much as possible. There was also quite a lot of commonsense things in the leaflet like getting up to date with housework, arranging for care of pets etc etc prior to surgery. Perhaps you should have been given a leaflet about it - maybe check with your CNS.
x
Hi,
I was on an ERAS program for my abdominal hysterectomy. Like Jazza said, a lot of it was just what seemed to me to be common sense, so you get back to some kind of normal functioning as soon as possibke, which reduces the stress on the body and helps get you home faster e.g. clear liquids can be consumed up to 2hr before, getting out of bed ASAP the day after surgery, encouraging normal eating, showering and walking, removing the catheter ASAP, etc
This contrasts with previous approaches to surgery where bed rest was considered necessary (subsequently found to increase risks of DVT), along with enema/bowel prep (stressful/miserable), prolonged fasting prior to GA (stressful/miserable), prolonged resting of the bladder with catheter (can cause irritation/cystitis), avoiding solid foods to rest the gut (again stressful/miserable).
I would recommend ERAS even though it is pretty much a fancy word for some common sense measures :-)
thank you Jazza and FealingTheFear - useful to know what you experienced. I haven't been given any details, though the Dr did mention getting the catheter out after the first day and getting me walking right away, so jolly good, I'm up for that.
