Enhanced Recovery After Gastrointestinal Surgery

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocols have significantly reshaped perioperative care in gastrointestinal surgery, offering a structured, evidence-based approach to improving patient outcomes. With a heavy focus on minimizing the physiological stress response to surgery, ERAS integrates multidisciplinary strategies, including preoperative counseling, opioid-sparing analgesia, goal-directed fluid therapy, early enteral nutrition, and early mobilization. In the majority of surgical procedures where it was implemented, it has demonstrated reduced morbidity, shortened length of stay, and improved functional recovery. Despite these successes, variability in protocol adherence, patient stratification and institutional uptake continues to challenge widespread optimization and standardization.

This Research Topic seeks to explore how ERAS protocols can be further refined and adapted to enhance postoperative recovery in gastrointestinal surgery. The aim is to identify not only procedure-specific but also patient-centered approaches that strengthen the effectiveness across diverse clinical settings. As surgical complexity and patient comorbidities increase, a deeper understanding of the biological and clinical mechanisms driving recovery is essential. This Topic encourages submissions that investigate how multimodal perioperative strategies interact to influence outcomes, how ERAS can be personalized based on patient and procedural variables and new innovative approaches. Through multidisciplinary contributions, the goal is to drive meaningful advances in surgical recovery and long-term health following these interventions.

We invite original research articles, reviews, clinical trials, case series, and translational studies that examine Enhanced Recovery After Surgery in gastrointestinal procedures. Submissions may focus on perioperative optimization strategies, including analgesia, fluid management, nutrition and gut microbiota modulation, and minimally invasive techniques. Studies evaluating patient-reported outcomes, ERAS adherence, high-risk or particular populations, and postoperative complications are encouraged. Comparative studies between conventional and ERAS pathways, cost-effectiveness analyses, and implementation frameworks are also within scope.