Project Fit Kidney
About
The Kidney Transplant Prehabilitation Study BC - “Project Fit Kidney” is a collaborative project with the Department of Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Our aim is to assess the feasibility of embedding prehabilitation into the care pathway of kidney transplant recipients. The implementation of this project will increase the accessibility of prehabilitation exercise programs for recipients waiting for kidney transplantation, empowering them to move more and thus achieve the many benefits that prehabilitation provides. These feasibility study results will inform the design of a subsequent exercise prehabilitation trial.
Why Prehabilitation?
Prehabilitation is the use of an exercise routine prior to surgery. It can improve someone’s ability to function and their mood. Prehabilitation has been shown to produce faster recovery times from surgery and a slowing of functional decline across many surgical patients. However, prehabilitation has not been widely studied in organ transplant recipients; a population which is particularly frail. We believe that patients waiting to receive a kidney transplant are well-suited to benefit from prehabilitation in the form of a home-based exercise program. Exercising before a transplant may reduce complications, improve recovery and overall quality of life.
Goal
By improving physical functioning pre-operatively, prehabilitation in kidney transplant recipients has the potential to improve postoperative recovery as well as a return to normal function. With established long-term benefits of physical activity, it is important to characterize these benefits as applied to kidney transplant patients. Doing so may lead to a low-cost, easy to perform, home-based exercise regimen that can significantly improve patients' frailty and quality of life before and after transplantation.
How It Works
Six-week take-home exercise program prior to kidney transplantation.
This includes aerobic, resistance and flexibility exercises.
Physical measures and questionnaires will be recorded at various time points, before and after surgery.