What is ERAS?
Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols have been shown to improve outcomes across many surgical specialties with reduction in post op complications, pain and length of stay. ERAS protocols are usually a collection of small changes that form multimodal perioperative care pathways. ERAS aims to maintain preoperative physiological organ function and reduce the stress response to surgery leading to better recovery and are generally well received by staff and patients.
In 2020 we started an ERAS program for kidney transplant recipients in response to the COVID pandemic in a hope to get our patients home early to reduce their exposure. It was a great success. We reduced our average length of stay from 8 days to 5 days and improved our physiotherapy referrals and discharge rates. Even with this reduction we did not see any increase in complications or adverse events and patients and staff were supportive. This has now become part of our standard care for kidney transplant recipients.
Our ERAS protocols