Report from the SwERAS Conference 2018

The second annual SwERAS conference was successfully held in November 2018, with 110 participants from a variety of professions and medical specialties. Twentyfour different hospitals, from three countries, were represented.
The sessions included a broad variety of topics. There was an in depth discussion after a large survey concerning practical implementation of the ERAS program for colorectal surgery. There were two inspiring examples from ERAS – hospitals in Sweden and Norway. The University Hospital of Sahlgrenska in Gothenburg presented there work with enhanced recovery after pancreas surgery. Östfolds hospital in Norway had a presentation of there way to achieve low complicationrate, short length of stay and high compliance to ERAS.
One session highlighted the importance of identifying, and special preoperative workup, for the high risk patients. With the Swedish SPOR registry as a base we had a number of lectures concerning the danger of surgery in a metabolic, respiratory, cardiac and mentally perspective.
Validation of the EIAS database is vital for extraction of correct data. Both for benchmarking within each hospital and for future research. SwERAS is therefore planning for a national validation program, during 2019, of each Swedish hospital that participates in an ERAS program.
One highlight of the two days was our guest speaker professor Nicolas Dermartines, University Hospital of Lausanne, Switzerland. He addressed the challenges of ERAS in liver and pancreas surgery on the first day of the conference, and both a historical and futuristic view on the subject: From surgical technique to ERAS, on the second day.
There was also plenty of time at coffee breaks and at lunch to network with other colleagues and get practical tips and tricks how to implement and how to maintain the ERAS spirit.
The 3rd SwERAS conference will be held in Stockholm on the 21 – 22 of November 2019. Welcome!
Lars Johansen