Prehabilitation Before Major Cancer Surgery

Prehabilitation prepares selected patients and households for surgery through safe conditioning, pain control, nutrition, equipment, and recovery planning without delaying urgent treatment.

A rehabilitation professional evaluates current gait, transfers, endurance, pain, home barriers, caregiver ability, and expected postoperative restrictions. The plan may include low-risk exercises, equipment practice, home changes, and baseline measurements.

Preparation can make postoperative handling safer, reveal a weak supporting limb, reduce preventable deconditioning, and let families rehearse slings, ramps, crates, or feeding arrangements before the operation.

A rehabilitation plan can support safe transfers, walking, toileting, strength, endurance, joint motion, home access, and valued activities. Goals and progression are individualized and coordinated with oncology, surgery, pain management, wound status, and bone integrity.

Medical clearance and a hands-on functional assessment should come before exercise or therapeutic modalities. The plan should name protected structures, measurable goals, caregiver technique, fatigue limits, home modifications, reassessment timing, and stop signals.

Prehabilitation is biologically plausible and used clinically, but veterinary oncology-specific outcome evidence is limited and varies by procedure. It complements rather than replaces timely surgery, staging, analgesia, and medical optimization.

Overexercise, falls, pain flare, tumor-weakened bone fracture, bleeding, fatigue, or delay of necessary treatment can occur if the plan is generic. Unstable patients may need protection rather than conditioning.

Do not massage, heat, stretch, load, or exercise an undiagnosed mass, unstable or tumor-weakened bone, fresh incision, painful limb, or neurologically declining patient without clearance. New swelling, marked pain, breathing change, collapse, wound change, or loss of function requires reassessment.