Maarten van Egmond

156 Chapter 7 The selection of relatively healthy patients included in our studies could be explained by the fact that patients were excluded for surgery if their physical functioning was too low, because of the associated risks for postoperative morbidity and mortality. 7 If we would be able to identify patients with poor preoperative physical functioning and to provide them with tailored preoperative physiotherapeutic treatment to improve their physical functioning, these patients may still be eligible for surgical treatment. Therefore, our findings emphasize the urge of stratifying risks preoperatively on poor postoperative outcomes based on individual risk factors, to decide who needs preoperative physiotherapeutic treatment. The majority of our study population did not show these individual risk factors and would not have benefited from preoperative training, yet still more than half of them suffered from postoperative complications. These postoperative complications in their turn, may hamper postoperative functional recovery and therefore postoperative physiotherapy with eHealth in the patient’s home situation should be strongly considered for patients at risk, to promote them being functionally independent again after high-risk surgery.