Chest Drainage Insights

Protocols and practices to optimise minimally invasive surgery with digital chest drainage data

Time to read: 1 min.

Digital chest drainage data supports the perioperative goals and practices of your ERAS program

Summary

Dr. Bouabdallah provided an overview of how his institution uses ERAS principles to provide comprehensive perioperative care. His philosophy is that the principal needs of the lung resection patient include preparation for surgery, which he likened to a marathon, the shortest appropriate length of stay to reduce risk of iatrogenic harm, rehabilitation to help the patient recover from what can be considered an amputation, and support in the fight against cancer, the disease that brought the patient to surgery in the first place.

Prehabilitation and Patient

For the preoperative phase, Dr. Bouabdallah highlighted his institution’s efforts in patient engagement and education through an association called “Le Souffle D’Après.” He also discussed the significance of prehabilitation as well as measures to decrease psychological, physiological, and physical stress on the patient, and the importance of using minimally invasive techniques as well as 3D surgical pre-planning for personalizing the procedure.

Postoperative Care after Lung Resection

Postoperatively, measures that Dr. Bouabdallah recommended included protecting the healing lungs by monitoring air flow and pleural pressure digitally, taking advantage of the portable nature of digital drainage systems to enable early patient mobility, physiotherapy, rehabilitation, and return to daily activity prior to discharge. Finally, he discussed his institution’s initiative to use an app-based, digital follow-up program to facilitate monitoring and continue patient engagement after early discharge.