refreshing prepared statements after index rebuild

Hi,

we have a corrupt index (size=20GB) and are about to create a new index
parallel to the corrupted index.
the index is running on a heavyly used online database with oltp character.

The question is what's the softest way to switch to the new index. there are
several application servers, webapplications and other daemons which use
prepared statements on the table associated with that index.

- just dropping the corrupt index results in errors returned while executing
the existing prepared statements
- restart of the postgres server works of course, but ... you know. that's
the last solution.
- i cannot currently cycle all jdbc connection pools, and bouncing the
app-servers & daemons does heavier damage than cycling the database

Is there a way to centrally refresh the existing prepared statements?

any hint that results in a soft switch without disturbance of the
application is appreciated.

best regards,
Uwe