Walking an extra 1,000 steps a day after surgery helped patients recover quicker, according to a new study of almost 2,000 adults.
The study showed that every extra 1,000 steps made per day after an operation was linked to 18% lower chance of complications, 16% lower odds of re-admission, and 6% shorter hospital stays.
The association stayed true across different types of procedures and patient health levels, according to the findings published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).
The researchers say step counts from a wearable device offer a practical tool to track recovery in real time, and so they analyzed data from 1,965 adult patients undergoing inpatient surgery.
They findings show that a patient’s step count following surgery is a “powerful” predictor of recovery, outperforming other metrics such as heart rate variability and self-reported wellness.
“We tell patients that they need to get up and walk after an operation, but we don’t have a good sense of how much they’re actually moving,” said study senior author Professor Timothy Pawlik. “Wearables give us an objective, continuous readout.”
“Instead of asking how you feel, we can see that you’re up and moving, which is a very actionable signal of how your recovery is progressing.”
Incremental increases in daily steps were also associated with lower odds of 30-day and 90-day hospital re-admissions, potentially indicating a dose-dependent response.
In contrast to the pedometry findings, post-operative changes in heart rate variability and self-reported “wellness” scores were not independently associated with length of stay, complications, or re-admissions.
Professor Pawlik, also the chair of the department of surgery at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, said the results demonstrate a scenario similar to that of the chicken and the egg.
“People who feel better are naturally more likely to be up and around,” he said. “However, the signal is so strong that it suggests step count is not just a marker of wellness, but a key component of it.”
“Seeing a patient’s step count drop can be an early indicator to intervene, perhaps by involving physical therapy or checking in more frequently.”
He says the findings align with a 2023 study which found that patients who took more than 7,500 steps per day before surgery had a 51% lower risk of post-op complications.
“If a patient’s goal is 8,000 steps before surgery and 6,000 on postoperative day three, they can see if they’re hitting those targets. It gives them a concrete goal and gives us objective data to help decide if they’re ready for discharge or if they need more support at home.”
Pawlik also said that all exercise plans should be discussed with a doctor and that the number of steps any individual takes each day should be considered in light of other health issues.
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In general, after an injury, basic movement is incredibly important, but it wasn’t always the doctor’s orders.
In 1966, a seminal study on exercise cardiology was completed called the Dallas Bed Rest and Exercise study. It found that when young athletes were prescribed 3 weeks of bed rest, which was a typical recommendation for a patient of any age that had survived a heart attack, their heart muscled atrophied 27%.
Their hearts were as correspondingly fit as someone 30 years older than they were, a fact that was confirmed when the same participants returned and undertook the same battery of physical fitness tests in 1996, and again in 2006.
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In 1996, their cardiorespiratory fitness as measured by VO2 max had reduced by 12% compared to their 20-year-old baseline: in other words, at age 50, their VO2 max was 15% higher than their 20-year-old selves after 3 weeks of bed rest.
In 2026, it was still 10% higher than after the bedrest. This powerful study and its incredible follow-up results go a long way toward demonstrating why movement—even as little as 1,000 extra steps, is so key to maintaining health into the final quartile of life, and why it was so key for these surgery patients to recovering faster and returning to hospital less often.
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