Prehabilitation Service - MeFit

Getting you fighting fit for treatment

Our prehabilitation service ‘MeFit’ supports patients to improve their health and prepare them for the challenges they may face before an operation or prior to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, to help them recover quicker.

The MeFit team also provides post-operative support.

What is prehabilitation?

Prehabilitation is similar to rehabilitation but it takes place before your procedure. Just as rehabilitation often involves different exercises, nutritional guidance, and anxiety coping strategies to improve your overall fitness, prehabilitation helps patients to cope with stress of their procedure, and to lay the ground for their recovery afterwards.

What support does MeFit provide?

Led by consultant anaesthetists, the prehabilitation team consists of two exercise physiologists.

Our MeFit service can provide a full range of support to improve the physical fitness and mental wellbeing of patients. This is done through a mix of tailored exercises, healthy eating advice, coping techniques and support with stopping smoking and reducing alcohol intake.

A cardiopulmonary exercise test is used to measure a patient’s fitness and predict risks with their therapy. The team also liaises with the patient’s GP and other specialist services to optimise chronic conditions.

What difference can the service make?

Prehabilitation can reduce the risk of complications after an operation and may help patients get better sooner after surgery.

Who can benefit from prehabilitation?

Prehabilitation can benefit patients who are going through a number of different treatments. It can be particularly helpful to patients with cancer as increased fitness helps them to cope with stress of treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy.

Conditions that we can support through prehabilitation include:

• Major surgery for cancer
• Major vascular surgery
• Chemotherapy
• Radiotherapy
• Joint replacement surgery.

How can I use the MeFit service?

If you have one of the conditions listed above, talk to your GP or your consultant about being referred to the team.

If you are referred to MeFit, the team will work with you to produce a tailored programme to your specific health needs.

Alternatively, you can contact the team for advice on whether you can use our service, and how you can access it

The Perioperative Exercise Testing and Training Society provides clinical evidence for the clinical benefits of Exercise Training, Exercise Testing as well as clinical guidelines.