ENHANCED RECOVERY AFTER SURGERY – ERAS
A proactive, patient-centered approach to enhance surgery recovery. The decision to undergo a surgical procedure carries with it many questions. Our goal is patient success at every level. This entails doing all we can for our patients to better their chances of having a positive response to surgery. To that end, Dr. Leary and his nurse, Peter, have developed and implemented a surgical management protocol called Enhanced Recovery After Surgery, or ERAS for short.
ERAS was developed in 2010 and has been utilized by the surgery community ever since. The goals of ERAS are simple: provide effective education alongside multi-model symptom management to enhance and augment a patient’s recovery from surgery. The symptoms we treat with our ERAS protocol include unwanted side effects, pain, anxiety, and fear- symptoms that are frequently associated with the decision to undergo a surgical procedure.
REDUCE UNWANTED SIDE EFFECTS.
By implementing ERAS for our patients, we can effectively treat all unwanted effects of surgery including pain, nausea, vomiting, constipation, and deconditioning. Controlling these side effects allows patients to progress through the surgical experience swiftly, therefore, allowing them to return to normal life faster with fewer side effects.
REDUCE POST-SURGICAL PAIN.
Pain is a complex symptom. So complex that it can be the result of inflammation, nerve activation and/or muscle spasms. A traditional medicine approach to pain is to wait for these symptoms to present and then treat them. Our ERAS approach is different. We strive to be more attentive and proactive. Our ERAS approach attacks all these sources of pain before the pain begins. By treating a known source of pain before it begins, the pain response is reduced. We employ a multi-model medication approach to pre-treat all the possible sources of pain. The result is a marked reduction in post-operative pain and recovery is augmented. With less pain, patients return to walking sooner and for longer periods of time, and also rapidly reduce their need for narcotic pain medications. Additionally, common surgical side effects like nausea, vomiting, and constipation are also effectively eliminated.
REDUCE FEAR THROUGH PATIENT EDUCATION.
Pain is not the only symptom ERAS was developed to address. We also seek to increase patient education to help eliminate any anxiety and fear the surgical experience might induce. With ERAS, every patient has a detailed pre-op conversation with our nurse practitioner regarding their individual need for surgery, what the details of the surgery are, and what the hospital experience will entail. By providing education, patients enter their surgical experience with the knowledge needed to not only excel but feel secure in their care.
We are so confident in our ERAS protocol helps every individual recover at a quicker rate, that we have extended ERAS to all our surgeries.
CLICK HERE to see our ERAS protocol. Additionally, feel free to openly discuss our ERAS protocol at any time during your care with our team.
