Ricerc@Sapienza

The Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is a pathway designed to achieve early recovery for patients undergoing major surgery. The ERAS pathway included three important components preoperative, intraoperative, postoperative program. Pre-habilitation and re-habilitation are of paramount importance to improve patients’ care. The ERAS is based on evidence-based medicine. Accumulating evidence highlighted that adopting ERAS resulted in lower complication rate, and shorter length of hospital stay in comparison to standard protocols of care.

We read thoroughly the article by Liao et al1 “Decreased hospital charges and postoperative pain in septoplasty by application of enhanced recovery after surgery” and we found it very interesting and innovative, given the low level of evidence about the application of the enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocol in otolaryngologic field. Nevertheless, there are some points that we have focused on since they remain unclear and decrease the scientific reliability of the results.

It remains largely unknown if ERAS program is safe, feasible and effective in elderly patients undergoing laparoscopic colorectal surgery. In addition, the definition of the "old patient"in terms of age varies across the studies and different age cut-off, such as 65, 70, and 75 years have been used worldwide.