How we did it
Our recommendations are the product of a multi-disciplinary systematic review of the current literature. Potential enhanced recovery interventions were identified and the supportive data was collected from existing publications. The proposed interventions were then evaluated through a collaborative process to achieve expert consensus on the current items recommended by the ERAS® Cardiac Society, including grading of the quality of evidence supporting them.
Recommendations
Based on our review of the current evidence for enhanced recovery interventions, an expert consensus was achieved for a 22-item list of recommendations. The recommendations are generally divided into categories representing which of the three phases they best represent: before, during, or after surgery. This is not an exhaustive list, and it represents the ERAS® Cardiac Society’s first iteration of these recommendations. We continue to collaborate with patients and experts from around the world, representing all areas of health care, to discover and disseminate new knowledge through our recommendations.
ExploreImplementation
Choosing which interventions to apply and how to measure their effectiveness is an important step in designing any enhanced recovery program. Additional critical steps are understanding your patients’ needs, learning about your local institution’s culture, translating existing knowledge into standardized improvements in healthcare delivery, and evaluating existing clinical pathways and practice patterns. These factors must all then be taken into account when designing and implementing your program. Implementation and maintenance of an enhanced recovery program can be challenging. The ERAS® Society is currently learning from other specialties to build our expertise in this area in order to share our growing implementation knowledge with other cardiac surgical teams.