Prehabilitation

Pre-operative rehabilitation, otherwise known as Prehabilitation or Prehab, is best described as a form of healthcare, which starts before a planned medical or surgical intervention, to reduce the impact of that intervention on patients’ overall health and reduce recovery time. Prehabilitation involves focusing on multiple aspects of patient’s health to provide a holistic approach to patient care.

Prehabilitation services have been recognised as being of particular benefit to patients with cancer. They can improve treatment outcomes, reduce the likelihood of post-surgery complications, and reduce the length of time patients spend in hospital.

Recognised benefits of physical activity at each stage of patients’ cancer journeys are:

• Pre-treatment: Increased cardio-respiratory fitness, fewer post-operative complications, and shorter hospital admissions.
• Treatment: Helps to preserve cardio-respiratory and muscular fitness, and to control cancer related fatigue.
• Post-treatment: Increased cardio-respiratory and muscular fitness, reduced fatigue, and improved body composition and wellbeing outcomes.
•  Palliative (living with cancer): Exercise is feasible, and may help maintain physical function, control fatigue, and improve bone health.
•  Survivorship (living beyond cancer): Associated with longer survival and a lower risk of recurrence or disease progression.

One Wirral Prehabilitation Service staff have saw the service have a positive impact on their patients, with the service making a significant difference to them. They feel that working for the service is rewarding, in particular the experience of seeing service users improve both physically and mentally as a result of the service.

One Wirral’s Cancer Prehabilitation Service supports people diagnosed with cancer to get physically and mentally fit before surgery or treatment. Prehabilitation enables people with cancer to reduce their surgical stress response and optimise their physiological function to aid their recovery and improve their quality-of-life post treatment. The benefits can be seen in as little as two weeks.

The programme empowers people with cancer to enhance their own physical and mental health and wellbeing and thereby supports them to live life as fully as they can. If patients improve these aspects of their lives, they can respond better to treatment and it also can improve their quality of life afterwards, including by helping with lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking or increasing exercise.

This is a community led model working in collaboration with Wirral University Hospital Trust, community organisations, Wirral Library Services and Wirral Leisure Services. The service is delivered by Prehabilitation Practitioners who are all Level 4 cancer rehabilitation exercise instructors. The service is tailored and personalised to the individual based off their needs and interests; there are plenty of options for people to become active such as over 15 face-to-face exercises classes within community centres and live online classes.

• Prepare for tests, surgery, or treatment
• Promote healthy behaviours
• Maximise resilience to treatment
• Improve long-term health
• Tailored healthy living plans based on your lifestyle

 How do we do it?

Once we understand an individual’s specific circumstances, our Prehabilitation Practitioners will work with individuals to provide a tailored lifestyle plan which includes prescribed tailored physical activity advice, healthy living plans and advice based on the health conditions, lifestyle, and individual needs. These activities can include:

• Prehabilitation exercise class
• Chair-based exercise
• Home-based workout
• Walking groups
• Gym and Swimming
• Many more activities

You will find more information about Wirral Cancer Prehabilitation on One Wirral | Cancer Prehabilitation.