Perioperative management
The ERAS method (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery) is a multimodal protocol of perioperative care aimed at ensuring a rapid postoperative recovery. It takes into account the latest available scientific evidences in the various disciplines that operate around the patients requiring major surgery, leading to positively change the response and preserving the physiological functional reserve. In fact it protects patients’ autonomy limiting stress, significantly reducing the length of hospital stay and also the rate of complications and readmission. In the ERAS protocol, the surgical process is totally redesigned, taking into account some important items in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative time. As known, elderly patients have specific and different features, multiple diseases, cognitive-behavioral and psychological problems, and a high risk of complications, representing their typical fragility. The ERAS pathway is capable of responding to the needs of the elderly patients, in order to respect the complexity of their multiple health conditions .