Background and purpose — There is a large volume of heterogeneous studies across all Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS^®) components within total hip and total knee replacement surgery. This multidisciplinary consensus review summarizes the literature, and proposes recommendations for the perioperative care of patients undergoing total hip replacement and total knee replacement with an ERAS program. Methods — Studies were selected with particular attention being paid to meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, and large prospective cohort studies that evaluated the efficacy of individual items of the perioperative treatment pathway to expedite the achievement of discharge criteria. A consensus recommendation was reached by the group after critical appraisal of the literature. Results — This consensus statement includes 17 topic areas. Best practice includes optimizing preoperative patient education, anesthetic technique, and transfusion strategy, in combination with an opioid-sparing multimodal analgesic approach and early mobilization. There is insufficient evidence to recommend that one surgical technique (type of approach, use of a minimally invasive technique, prosthesis choice, or use of computer-assisted surgery) over another will independently effect achievement of discharge criteria. Interpretation — Based on the evidence available for each element of perioperative care pathways, the ERAS^® Society presents a comprehensive consensus review, for the perioperative care of patients undergoing total hip replacement and total knee replacement surgery within an ERAS^® program. This unified protocol should now be further evaluated in order to refine the protocol and verify the strength of these recommendations.

Importance Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) is a global surgical quality improvement initiative now firmly entrenched within the field of perioperative care. Although ERAS is associated with significant clinical outcome improvements and cost savings in numerous surgical specialties, several opportunities and challenges deserve further discussion. Observations Uptake and implementation of ERAS Society guidelines, together with ERAS-related research, have increased exponentially since the inception of the ERAS movement. Opportunities to further improve patient outcomes include addressing frailty, optimizing nutrition, prehabilitation, correcting preoperative anemia, and improving uptake of ERAS worldwide, including in low- and middle-income countries. Challenges facing enhanced recovery today include implementation, carbohydrate loading, reversal of neuromuscular blockade, and bowel preparation. The COVID-19 pandemic poses both a challenge and an opportunity for ERAS. Conclusions and Relevance To date, ERAS has achieved significant benefit for patients and health systems; however, improvements are still needed, particularly in the areas of patient optimization and systematic implementation. During this time of global crisis, the ERAS method of delivering care is required to take surgery and anesthesia to the next level and bring improvements in outcomes to both patients and health systems.

This review presents current virtual reality based training simulators for hip, knee and other orthopaedic surgery, including elective and trauma surgical procedures. There have not been any reviews focussing on hip and knee orthopaedic simulators. A comparison of existing simulator features is provided to identify what is missing and what is required to improve upon current simulators. In total 11 hip replacements pre-operative planning tools were analysed, plus 9 hip trauma fracture training simulators. Additionally 9 knee arthroscopy simulators and 8 other orthopaedic simulators were included for comparison. The findings are that for orthopaedic surgery simulators in general, there is increasing use of patient-specific virtual models which reduce the learning curve. Modelling is also being used for patient-specific implant design and manufacture. Simulators are being increasingly validated for assessment as well as training. There are very few training simulators available for hip replacement, yet more advanced virtual reality is being used for other procedures such as hip trauma and drilling. Training simulators for hip replacement and orthopaedic surgery in general lag behind other surgical procedures for which virtual reality has become more common. Further developments are required to bring hip replacement training simulation up to date with other procedures. This suggests there is a gap in the market for a new high fidelity hip replacement and resurfacing training simulator.

Introduction: Orthopaedic enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) providers are encouraged to estimate the actual benefit of ERAS according to the patient’s opinion by using patient generated data alongside traditional measures such as length of stay. The aim of this paper was to systemically review the literature on the use of patient generated information in orthopaedic ERAS across the whole perioperative pathway.Methods: Publications were identified using Embase^™, MEDLINE^®, AMED, CINAHL^®(Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), the Cochrane Library and the British Nursing Index. Search terms related to experiences, acceptance, satisfaction or perception of ERAS and quality of life (QoL).Findings: Of the 596 abstracts found, 8 papers were identified that met the inclusion criteria. A total of 2,208 patients undergoing elective hip and knee arthroplasty were included. Patient satisfaction was reported in 6 papers. Scores were high in all patients and not adversely affected by length of stay. QoL was reported in 2 papers and showed that QoL scores continued to increase up to 12 months following ERAS. Qualitative methods were used in one study, which highlighted problems with support following discharge. There is a paucity of data reporting on patient experience in orthopaedic ERAS. However, ERAS does not compromise patient satisfaction or QoL after elective hip or knee surgery. The measurement of patient experience should be standardised with further research.