What matters to you? An investigation of patients' perspectives on and acceptability of prehabilitation in major cancer surgery.

OBJECTIVE: To understand perspectives on and acceptability of prehabilitation among patients undergoing complex abdominal cancer surgery (cytoreductive surgery with or without hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy). METHODS: Seventy-nine patients admitted to a Danish colorectal or ovarian cancer centre participated in qualitative semi-structured interviews and/or registered their prehabilitation activities based on preoperative recommendations presented in a leaflet. Malterud's principles of systematic text condensation were used to analyse the interview data, and descriptive statistics were used to describe the activity registrations. RESULTS: Five domains clarify central aspects of the patients' perspectives on and acceptability of prehabilitation: the preoperative period, attitudes towards prehabilitation, the actual prehabilitation performed, motivation to take action and the need for support. CONCLUSION: Patients undergoing major abdominal cancer surgery are interested in and positive towards prehabilitation, but it has to be on their terms. The patients need support and supervision, but it has to be provided in a setting and in a way that are in line with the patient's preferences, resources and values. Thus, patient involvement is necessary to create prehabilitation programmes that are feasible and fit into patients' everyday lives.

Prehabilitation in cancer care: patients' ability to prepare for major abdominal surgery.

BACKGROUND: Patients' perspectives on standardised, multimodal prehabilitation programmes showed barriers to adherence. Further investigation of patients' ability to prepare is needed. AIM: To investigate what patients with cancer who were due to undergo major abdominal surgery actually were able to do when provided with preoperative, home-based, multimodal recommendations presented in a leaflet. METHODS: Patients from the colorectal- or ovarian cancer centre, who were scheduled for major abdominal surgery, received a leaflet with preoperative recommendations. On a daily basis, the patients filled in what they had completed in relation to these recommendations, so that adherence could be investigated. Additionally, face-to-face interviews were conducted to evaluate patients' experiences of using the leaflet. Malterud's principles of systematic text condensation were used to analyse the interviews. A convergent design was used to merge the quantitative and qualitative data into a combined interpretation presented in the discussion. RESULTS: A total of 53 patients returned a completed leaflet, and five patients were interviewed. In the combined interpretation, patients' ability to prepare was presented through four major domains. The domains were adherence and the importance of support, manageable actions leading to change, preparation in a broader perspective and impediments to preparation and to symptom relief. CONCLUSIONS: Patients prepared themselves in various ways, which were not limited to recommendations inspired by multimodal prehabilitation. Patients from the ovarian cancer centre increased their weekly exercise during the preoperative period, which indicates that the leaflet not only functioned as a data collection tool, but also motivated and supported the patients in prehabilitation-related actions. Patients' perspectives on prehabilitation need to be taken into account, when aiming to enhance patient-centredness and adherence.