Efficacy of Pre and Rehabilitation in Radical Cystectomy on Health Related Quality of Life and Physical Function: A Systematic Review

Objective: The efficacy of prehabilitation or rehabilitation interventions on radical cystectomy (RC) patient reported outcomes (PROs), and patient centered outcome has not yet been thoroughly explored in prior reviews, therefore the aim of this review is to evaluate the efficacy of a single or multi-modal prehabilitation or/and postoperative rehabilitation interventions compared to standard treatment on postoperative complications after RC.

Methods: We performed a three-step search strategy in PubMed, Cinahl, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. We used Covidence for the screening of articles, risk of bias assessment, and data-extraction. GRADE was used to assess the risk of bias in outcomes across studies. Where meta-analysis was possible, we used the random effect method due to substantial heterogeneity. The remaining outcomes were summarized narratively.

Results: We identified fourteen studies addressing one of the outcomes. None of the studies provided evidence to support that prehabilitation and/or rehabilitation interventions can improve global health related quality of life (HRQoL) in RC surgery or can reduce postoperative complications significantly. However, preoperative and postoperative education in stoma care can significantly improve self-efficacy and we found significant added benefits of sexual counseling to intracavernous injections compared to injection therapy alone. Likewise, an intensive smoking and alcohol cessation intervention demonstrated a significant effect on quit rates. Physical exercise is feasible and improves physical functioning although it does not reduce the postoperative complications.

Conclusions: Currently, no evidence of efficacy of prehabilitation and/or rehabilitation interventions to improve the overall HRQoL or postoperative complications after RC exists. We found evidence that education in stoma care improved self-efficacy significantly. Adequately powered randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are needed to generate high-quality evidence in this field.