Maarten van Egmond

58 Chapter 3 CONCLUSIONS This study shows that functional status of high-risk surgical patients undergoing esophagectomy returned to baseline values three months after surgery, despite the high incidence of postoperative complications. This requires rethinking the concept of prehabilitation, where clearly not all patients benefited from high functional status to prevent postoperative complications. Therefore, this study illustrates the importance of first evaluating the pre- and postoperative course of functional status of high-risk surgical patients and of timing and tailoring the physiotherapy treatment to a patient’s individual needs before referring them for pre- or postoperative physiotherapy. CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT MAvE received a doctoral grant for teachers (023.003.016) in 2014 by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). MIvBH received research grants from Olympus and Stryker. These funding sources were not involved in the research design, data analysis or writing of present article. MIvBH is consultant for Medtronic and Mylan, in areas unrelated to the present study. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest.