SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ERAS® Cardiac Surgery has formalized an agreement to act as the sole official ERAS® Cardiac Surgical Specialty Society representing ERAS® Society on a global level. In addition, ERAS® Cardiac Surgery has been granted the distinct privilege to propose which hospital(s) should be appointed ERAS® Centers of Excellence in Cardiac Surgery.
Leading cardiac surgeons, anesthesiologists, critical care specialists and cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) nurses formed ERAS® Cardiac Surgery, after recognition that Enhanced Recovery After Surgery efforts had not been formalized or generally available for cardiac surgical patients. The mission of the group is to optimize perioperative care of cardiac surgical patients through collaborative discovery, analysis, expert consensus, and dissemination of best recovery practices that will improve both short and long-term outcomes and value and decrease complications and readmissions.
The organizing committee for ERAS® Cardiac Surgery includes Daniel Engelman, MD, and Richard Engelman, MD, Baystate Medical Center, Judson Williams, MD, WakeMed Health and Hospitals, Edward Boyle, MD, St. Charles Medical Center, Louis P. Perrault, MD, Ph.D., Montreal Heart Institute, Ali Khoynezhad, MD, MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute, Rakesh C. Arora, MD, St. Boniface General Hospital, Eric Roselli, MD, Cleveland Clinic, V. Seenu Reddy, MD, Centennial Heart & Vascular Center, Marc Gerdisch, MD, Franciscan Health Heart Center, Jerrold Levy, MD, Duke University, Kevin Lobdell, MD, Atrium Health, Nick Fletcher, MD, St Georges University of London, Matthias Kirsch, MD, CHUV Cardiac Surgery Centre, University Hospital Vaudois, and Gregg Nelson, MD, University of Calgary.
“We are honored to have been selected to represent this world-class International Society as its sole Cardiac Surgical specialty subgroup,” said ERAS® Cardiac Surgery President, Dr. Daniel Engelman. “The ability to extend our message to the international community will begin immediately, with our subspecialty group sessions at the World Congress of Enhanced Recovery May 23-25 in Stockholm, Sweden. The involvement of the Cardiac Surgical Community in the ERAS initiative is long overdue.”
The group has been collaborating with experts from around the world to broadly solicit ideas for approaches to enhanced recovery and analyze the published clinical data that support such approaches. They are currently working to complete a formal consensus manuscript of over 20 best practices that heart surgical programs can immediately implement to improve outcomes for their patients. Some of the standardized approaches that were considered include: prehabilitation to help patients prepare for surgery, protocols to better manage glucose, fluids, and intestinal mobility, new techniques for rigid fixation of the sternum, active clearance methods for chest tubes to prevent retained blood syndrome, use of biomarkers to prevent acute kidney injury, methods to minimize opioid use, and novel approaches to reduce postoperative delirium.
“I predict that ERAS protocols will become the standard of care for cardiac surgical patients in the next few years,” said Dr. Judson Williams. “We have already demonstrated significant reductions in length of stay, opioid utilization and improved patient and staff satisfaction in our cardiac surgical patients at WakeMed Health and Hospitals, NC, USA.”
This formal consensus work, along with other topics related to enhanced recovery after cardiac surgery, will be presented during a half-day session during the AATS Annual Meeting on April 28th. The final work product will be submitted for peer review publication facilitating its dissemination for implementation at leading heart programs around the world.
“The ERAS® Society is very pleased to have added this important surgical discipline to the fast -growing network of specialties around the world.” said Professor Olle Ljungqvist. “The ERAS® Cardiac Surgery Society is a formidable group of experts that will play a pivotal role to develop and implement ERAS for the benefit of the large number of patients undergoing cardiac surgery world wide”
ERAS® Cardiac Surgery is a non-profit organization with the mission to develop evidence-based expert consensus statements promoting best practice recovery practices. The goal is to provide hospitals better guidance for developing local protocols that are part of a continuous quality improvement (CQI) process for better patient care and a reduction of postoperative complications and costs after cardiothoracic surgery (www.erascardiac.org) Focusing on cardiac surgery, our organization is collaborating with ERAS® (www.erassociety.org), an organization that promotes enhanced recovery in many other surgical specialties worldwide. For more information about ERAS® Cardiac, contact: Alan Morasch, CAE via alan@eracs.org.
The ERAS® Society (www.erassociety.org) is an international, non-profit, multi-professional and multi-disciplinary medical society registered in Sweden devoted to the improvement of perioperative care, most commonly referred to as “Enhanced Recovery After Surgery" or "ERAS". The ERAS® Society is comprised of leaders and developers of care for patients undergoing surgery in a large range of surgical specialties. The ERAS® Study Group and later the ERAS® Society was assembled by Professor Ken Fearon, Univ Edinburgh, UK and Professor Olle Ljungqvist, Karolinska Insitutet, Sweden in 2001.