Preoperative Optimisation in Patients Undergoing Cancer Surgery: 2nd Edition
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Survivorship and Quality of Life".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 July 2026 | Viewed by 2152
Special Issue Editors
2. Faculty of Medicine and Health, Central Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Interests: prehabilitation; patient screening; clinical trials; decision-making; effectiveness; cost-effectiveness; patient reported outcomes; quality of life; surgical outcomes; cancer surgery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
2. Faculty of Medicine and Health, Central Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Interests: surgical approach; decision making; patient selection; surgical outcomes; colorectal cancer; minimally invasive surgery; complex surgery; patient reported outcomes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
For selected patients presenting with cancer, surgery with or without chemoradiotherapy is the mainstream treatment option, with the primary aim of removing all cancer cells. Despite the improved survival benefits, postoperative morbidity is still high. This slows the recovery period, with some patients needing to stay in hospital for a longer period of time, and this has the potential to adversely affect the patient’s quality of life.
Recently, prehabilitation was introduced to enhance general health and wellbeing before cancer surgery. There is some evidence suggesting that preoperative medical, physical, nutritional, and psychological interventions may reduce postoperative morbidity rates, facilitate recovery, and improve subsequent quality of life. However, the evidence around the effectiveness of preoperative optimisation is still in an embryonic phase. It is also unclear if preoperative patient optimisation should be offered more selectively to at-risk patient cohorts.
Thus, this Special Issue will cover all aspects of preoperative optimisation, including but not limited to the following:
- Original studies or systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of preoperative interventions (medical, physical, nutritional, and psychological) on reducing postoperative outcomes and length of hospital stay and improving quality of life in patients undergoing cancer surgery;
- Measures of association between preoperative factors (medical, physical, nutritional, and psychological) and postoperative surgical outcomes;
- Evidence gaps in prehabilitation, including research priorities and limitations of the current evidence;
- Applicability of different prehabilitation modes, including telehealth interventions.
You are welcome to read the published papers in the first edition of this Special Issue: Preoperative Optimisation in Patients Undergoing Cancer Surgery.
Dr. Daniel Steffens
Dr. Cherry Koh
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cancers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- prehabilitation
- medical optimization
- exercise
- nutrition
- psychological interventions
- surgery
- cancer
- surgical outcome
- preoperative
- clinical trials
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