Background: Prehabilitation is a therapeutic strategy involving preoperative physical exercises, nutritional support, and stress and anxiety reduction. This approach has been gaining popularity and has been seeing effective results in adults in terms of improving pre and postoperative outcomes. The purpose of this review was to summarise the evidence about the effects of exercise-based prehabilitation programs on various outcome measures in children post elective surgeries.­­ Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PEDro, CINAHL/EBSCO and EMBASE electronic databases were searched from inception to June 2021. Based on the inclusion criteria, titles and abstracts were independently screened by the authors. After that, a data extraction table of the selected studies which included the participants, type, and details of exercise intervention, outcome measures and results were analysed after which the quality assessment of the studies was done. Results: The search yielded 2219 articles of which three articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria with two studies being randomized controlled trials and one being a quasi-experimental pre-post type of study. One randomized controlled trial was on the effects of exercise-based prehabilitation in reducing pulmonary complications post cardiac surgeries in children and the other two studies were on the effects of prehabilitation on functional capacity & pulmonary function. All the three articles found that exercise-based prehabilitation had a positive effect on children’s post-surgery. Conclusion: Although there is a paucity of evidence-based literature, we conclude based on the existing literature retrieved by our review that exercise-based prehabilitation improves postoperative outcomes and helps in reducing postoperative complications in children undergoing various surgeries.

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Background: Surgical procedures are accompanied by various complications such as decreased respiratory muscle strength, decreased functional capacity, decreased quality of life, and increased the length of hospital stay. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that exercise-based prehabilitation offered before major abdominal surgeries can improve the above-mentioned complications. Considering the socioeconomic inequalities, educational characteristics, and healthcare system, which are different in low and lower-middle income countries, it is important to know whether interventions such as prehabilitation are feasible and effective in patients undergoing elective abdominal surgeries. Hence, we set out to determine the role of exercise-based prehabilitation in patients opting for these surgeries. Methods: In this feasibility study, 71% of the eligible patients agreed to participate. Baseline values of respiratory muscle strength, functional capacity and quality of life were recorded preoperatively, and an exercise-based prehabilitation programme consisting of chest physiotherapy, aerobic exercises and inspiratory muscle training according to the patient’s capacity was administered until the day of surgery. A total of 62% of the participants completed the study whose postoperative values and a user satisfaction scale were noted. The feasibility parameters  of recruitment rate, dropout rates, adherence events, adverse events and participants satisfaction were evaluated and the differences in the preoperative and postoperative values of respiratory muscle strength, functional capacity and quality of life  were calculated using the paired t-test  accordingly. Results: Feasibility was measured using five parameters. All the values were > 50% and above. The secondary variables respiratory muscle strength, functional capacity, and quality of life were not significant. Conclusions: This study concluded that prehabilitation is feasible and can be effectively delivered to patients scheduled for elective abdominal surgery. Clinical Trials Registry India registration: CTRI/2021/05/033707 (20/05/2021).

Background: Prehabilitation is a therapeutic strategy involving preoperative physical exercises, nutritional support, and stress and anxiety reduction. This approach has been gaining popularity and has been seeing effective results in adults in terms of improving pre and postoperative outcomes. The purpose of this review was to summarise the evidence about the effects of exercise-based prehabilitation programs on various outcome measures in children post elective surgeries.­­ Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PEDro, CINAHL/EBSCO and EMBASE electronic databases were searched from inception to June 2021. Based on the inclusion criteria, titles and abstracts were independently screened by the authors. After that, a data extraction table of the selected studies which included the participants, type, and details of exercise intervention, outcome measures and results were analysed after which the quality assessment of the studies was done. Results: The search yielded 2219 articles of which three articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria with two studies being randomized controlled trials and one being a quasi-experimental pre-post type of study. One randomized controlled trial was on the effects of exercise-based prehabilitation in reducing pulmonary complications post cardiac surgeries in children and the other two studies were on the effects of prehabilitation on functional capacity & pulmonary function. All the three articles found that exercise-based prehabilitation had a positive effect on children’s post-surgery. Conclusion: Although there is a paucity of evidence-based literature, we conclude based on the existing literature retrieved by our review that exercise-based prehabilitation improves postoperative outcomes and helps in reducing postoperative complications in children undergoing various surgeries.