Everyone is talking about ERAS. ERAS stands for "enhanced recovery after surgery". With ERAS programs, patients recover faster and better after surgery. With it, patients also feel better psychologically after surgery.

For more than 2 years, we have established an ERAS protocol for our reconstructive surgeries after breast cancer. This includes detailed information for patients before surgery, an extremely gentle procedure with intraoperative application of local anesthetics that reduce the use of opioids, and then targeted mobilization. In the operating room, we plastic surgeons have to work hand in hand with our colleagues in anesthesiology to make the procedure as gentle as possible. Overall, we achieve better healing and higher patient satisfaction. The length of stay in hospital is significantly reduced.

In our latest study comparing breast reconstructions with DIEP-flaps, published in the prestigious Journal of Personalized Medicine (JPM), we compared a hospital with and one without ERAS. The result was that with ERAS, patients can go home faster, and in addition, the risks are reduced for certain high-risk patients, e.g. patients with high BMI. The effort to implement ERAS is worth it. Read our study here.