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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Endosc. Sep 16, 2025; 17(9): 109033
Published online Sep 16, 2025. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v17.i9.109033
Published online Sep 16, 2025. doi: 10.4253/wjge.v17.i9.109033
Effect of prehabilitation in patients undergoing gastric or oesophageal cancer resections: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Omar Lubbad, Wajeeh Ullah Mahmood, Medical School, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton BN19PX, Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Shehram Shafique, Department of Surgery, Worthing Hospital, Worthing BN112DH, West Sussex, United Kingdom
Krishna K Singh, Goldie Khera, Muhammad Shafique Sajid, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton BN25BE, Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Author contributions: Lubbad O contributed to designing the study, data collection, and writing of the manuscript; Mahmood WU contributed to designing the study and data collection; Shafique S, Singh KK, and Khera G contributed to quality and professional revision; Sajid MS contributed to designing the study, revision of data collection, and quality revision of the manuscript; all of the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Omar Lubbad, Medical School, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, 94 N–S Road, Falmer, Brighton BN19PX, Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom.
Received: April 28, 2025
Revised: June 5, 2025
Accepted: August 20, 2025
Published online: September 16, 2025
Processing time: 137 Days and 8.7 Hours
Revised: June 5, 2025
Accepted: August 20, 2025
Published online: September 16, 2025
Processing time: 137 Days and 8.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Gastric and oesophageal cancer resections are major surgeries often linked with significant complications and lengthy recovery. This meta-analysis of 16 randomised controlled trials demonstrates that prehabilitation–which involves structured physical, nutritional, and psychological preparation before surgery–can significantly reduce postoperative complications, hospital readmissions, and length of stay. It also improves patients’ preoperative physical fitness, as reflected in better performance on the six-minute walk test. These findings support the incorporation of prehabilitation into routine care pathways for upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery.