Enhanced Recovery After Surgery in the Urinary Diversion Population: Are Protocols Applied Differently in the Benign Indication Population?

Objective: To retrospectively evaluate enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocol administration, hospital length of stay, 30-day readmission, and complication rates among cystectomy and/or urinary diversion patients with benign or malignant indication.

Materials and methods: Data was extracted retrospectively for cystectomy and/or urinary diversion performed at our institution from June 2016 to May 2019. Descriptive statistics, Chi squared, Wilcoxon rank-sum, binary logistic regression, and linear regression functions in R 4.0.4 (R Foundation), R Package "Tidverse" V1.3.0.9, and RStudio V1.44.1106 (RStudio, PBC) were used to analyze data.

Results: 102 patients met selection criteria with 36 and 66 patients in the benign and malignant indication cohorts, respectively. Significant differences between cohorts included BMI, age, opioid exposure, and spinal anomalies. The malignant cohort had higher ERAS completion rates for preoperative and intraoperative protocols (41% and 53% vs 14% and 19%). The mean ERAS item administration for benign and malignant indication patients differed significantly (2.9 vs 4.2, P < 0.01). Logistic regression demonstrated benign indication was significantly associated with ERAS failure (OR 4.25, 95% CI 1.18 - 21.03, P = 0.043). Higher ERAS item administration sum was associated with shorter hospitalizations and lower complication rates (P = < 0.01, P = 0.019). No association was observed for 30-day readmission.

Conclusion: The benign urinary diversion/cystectomy population more frequently possesses characteristics adverse to ERAS protocol completion and in our study received fewer ERAS protocol items. This was associated with longer hospitalizations and higher postoperative complication rates. Population-specific ERAS protocols targeted at increasing ERAS completion could reduce morbidity.