medicine
Walking an Extra 1,000 Steps a Day After Surgery Helps Patients Recover Quicker
A study of nearly 2,000 patients found each extra 1,000 daily steps meant fewer complications and shorter stays — a simple, hopeful signal anyone recovering can act on.
Walking an extra 1,000 steps a day after surgery helped patients recover quicker, according to a new study of almost 2,000 adults.
The study showed that every extra 1,000 steps made per day after an operation was linked to 18% lower chance of complications, 16% lower odds of re-admission, and 6% shorter hospital stays.
The association stayed true across different types of procedures and patient health levels, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).
The researchers say step counts from a wearable device offer a practical tool to track recovery in real time, and so they analyzed data from 1,965 adult patients undergoing inpatient surgery.
They findings show that a patient’s step count following surgery is a “powerful” predictor of recovery, outperforming other metrics such as heart rate variability and self-reported wellness.
“We tell patients that they need to get up and walk after an operation, but we don’t have a good sense of how much they’re actually moving,” said study senior author Professor Timothy Pawlik. “Wearables give us an objective, continuous readout.”
“Instead of asking how you feel, we can see that you’re up and moving, which is a very actionable signal of how your recovery is progressing.”
Incremental increases in daily steps were also associated with lower odds of 30-day and 90-day hospital re-admissions, potentially indicating a dose-dependent response.
In contrast to the pedometry findings, post-operative changes in heart rate variability and self-reported “wellness” scores were not independently associated with length of stay, complications, or re-admissions.
Professor Pawlik, also the chair of the department of surgery at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, said the results demonstrate a scenario similar to that of the chicken and the egg.
“People who feel better are naturally more likely to be up and around,” he said. “However, the signal is so strong that it suggests step count is not just a marker of wellness, but a key component of it.”
“Seeing a patient’s step count drop can be an early indicator to intervene, perhaps by involving physical therapy or checking in more frequently.”