What Impact Will New ASCRS and SAGES Guidelines on Advanced Recovery After Colon and Rectal Surgery Have?

Q: What do the new joint guidelines from ASCRS and SAGES on advanced recovery after colon and rectal surgery mean for both patients and surgeons?

A: The ultimate goal is to have patient-improved outcomes. With that in mind, two of the major societies that deal with colorectal surgery patients came together and developed a best practices, evidence-based guideline to help practitioners and patients understand the multimodality and multidisciplinary component of improving their care.

The American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons and the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons examined all aspects of preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative care to improve patient outcomes. As a part of that, what we’re really looking at is having patients buy into their own care — to understand the reason why we want them to get up and walk so soon after surgery, why we want to limit narcotics and use a multimodality therapy to give them the best pain control possible. We want patients to understand how they can participate in their care to make sure that they also are improving their own outcomes.

These new guidelines truly represent the fact that we can all come together to do this better. We can not only get patients out of the hospital faster, but have them recover with fewer complications and be readmitted to the hospital at a much lower rate.

— Scott Steele, MD
Chairman, Colorectal Surgery