Prehabilitation Exercise Plus Perioperative Optimization of Senior Health

The purpose of this study is the examine the feasibility of and estimate the efficacy of a preoperative exercise (i.e. prehabilitation) program in 40 up to sedentary older adults (i.e. age 60 and over) undergoing abdominal, urologic or gynecologic surgery under the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) protocol at Duke, using a variety of techniques to measure the possible effect of this intervention. Study patients will undergo a program of prehabilitation exercise for 6 days per week prescribed for them by an exercise physiologist, for up to 4 weeks prior to surgery. Study participants will undergo four types of assessments: Functional/Cognitive testing; Blood/cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples and Muscle biopsies; Brain Imaging; and Brain Activity Recording. Clinical Outcomes will also be obtained from the Duke electronic medical record system. The risks of the exercise intervention are generally mild, since moderate exercise in this patient population generally results in improved health outcomes. Data from these patients will be analyzed in comparison to propensity matched patients from the Duke Markers of Alzheimer's Disease and neurocognitive Outcomes after Perioperative Care (MADCO-PC) study who did not undergo this prehabilitation exercise intervention. Taken together, the results of this study will allow the investigators to estimate the possible effect of prehabilitation exercise on multiple domains of postoperative recovery (cognition, brain connectivity, biomarkers, brain activity, etc) and will provide important preliminary data.