Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract State-of-the-Art Session 2022: Frailty in Surgery.

Given the exponentially aging population and rising life expectancy in the United States, surgeons are facing a challenging frail population who may require surgery but may not qualify based on their general fitness. There is an urgent need for greater awareness of the importance of frailty measurement and the implementation of universal assessment of frail patients into clinical practice. Pairing risk stratification with stringent protocols for prehabilitation and minimally invasive surgery and appropriate enhanced recovery protocols could optimize and condition frail patients before, during, and immediately after surgery to mitigate postoperative complications and consequences on patient function and quality of life. In this paper, highlights from the 2022 Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract State-of-the-Art Session on frailty in surgery are presented. This work aims to improve the understanding of the impact of frailty on patients and the methods used to augment the outcomes for frail patients during their surgical experience.

Engagement and Adherence with a Web-Based Prehabilitation Program for Patients Awaiting Abdominal Colorectal Surgery.

BACKGROUND: Understanding the drivers of patient engagement and adherence is critical to developing and implementing preoperative optimization programs. The aim of this project is to determine whether existing health beliefs are associated with engagement and adherence in a home-based online prehabilitation program. METHODS: Patients undergoing abdominal colorectal operations were enrolled in an online nutrition and exercise program. We collected baseline health beliefs and mindsets, daily exercises, and weekly diet recalls. Multivariable binary logistic regression predicted engagement, multivariable ordinary least squares regression predicted diet adherence, and generalized linear models with a binomial distribution predicted engagement and exercise adherence. RESULTS: Of the 227 patients who agreed to participate, 75% activated their accounts; of those, 75% used the program. Engagement with the program was unrelated to health beliefs or mindsets. Positive diet-related health beliefs and a growth mindset were associated with positive diet behaviors and inversely associated with negative diet behaviors. Exercise-related health beliefs and mindsets were not associated with exercise adherence. Patients enrolled within 4 weeks of surgery used the program more than those enrolled more than 4 weeks from surgery. CONCLUSIONS: This app-based prehabilitation program demonstrated moderate acceptability, engagement, and adherence. Addressing health beliefs and mindsets may be an effective way of increasing adherence to diet recommendations. To increase adherence to exercise recommendations, further assessment of potential barriers is critical. While an online platform is a highly promising scalable strategy, more customization and user engagement are necessary to make it an effective way of delivering a preoperative health behavior change intervention.

Elucidating the fundamental fibrotic processes driving abdominal adhesion formation.

Adhesions are fibrotic scars that form between abdominal organs following surgery or infection, and may cause bowel obstruction, chronic pain, or infertility. Our understanding of adhesion biology is limited, which explains the paucity of anti-adhesion treatments. Here we present a systematic analysis of mouse and human adhesion tissues. First, we show that adhesions derive primarily from the visceral peritoneum, consistent with our clinical experience that adhesions form primarily following laparotomy rather than laparoscopy. Second, adhesions are formed by poly-clonal proliferating tissue-resident fibroblasts. Third, using single cell RNA-sequencing, we identify heterogeneity among adhesion fibroblasts, which is more pronounced at early timepoints. Fourth, JUN promotes adhesion formation and results in upregulation of PDGFRA expression. With JUN suppression, adhesion formation is diminished. Our findings support JUN as a therapeutic target to prevent adhesions. An anti-JUN therapy that could be applied intra-operatively to prevent adhesion formation could dramatically improve the lives of surgical patients.