Surgery is the cornerstone for colon cancer treatment. Prehabilitation in older patients with colon cancer may improve recovery after treatment by enhancing preoperative resilience in order to reduce the severity of treatment-related complications that often cause significant disability.
In this thesis, preoperative colon cancer care in older patients is evaluated. At the moment, there is a great practice variance in care between hospitals and prehabilitation is only applied to a limited extent. Although research in this thesis shows that prehabilitation leads to a reduction in the number and severity of complications, it remains unclear whether prehabilitation is cost-effective. This thesis also highlights that the evaluation of a complex intervention such as prehabilitation in daily clinical practice entails challenges. Possible solutions to these challenges are described.
Thea Heil (1990) studied Medicine at Erasmus MC (2009-2015). Afterwards she started her medical specialization in Geriatrics (2015). In January 2018 Thea interrupted her specialization and started with her PhD at the department of Geriatric Medicine at Radboudumc. Her experiences in science, management and elderly care medicine during her PhD prompted Thea to switch to Elderly Care Medicine (March 2023).