Abstract:
Introduction: Improvement in cancer care increases life expectancy of patients with cancer, most of whom have experienced prolonged episodes of fatigue during and after their treatment. This has been found to reduce the quality of life and increase morbidity and mortality of such patients. Therefore, additional interventions are beneficial to improve overall quality of life as well as longevity. There is growing evidence that exercise is beneficial for oncology patients though improvements in their physical, physiological abilities and functions. Objectives: The purpose of the present article is to evaluate the current evidence to determine if exercise could be used as a safe and effective medicine to reduce fatigue and improve quality of life in these patients. Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL search engines were electronically searched and 21 empirical studies, published between 1995 and 2009, were located. Discussion: There is accumulative data in the literature supporting the effectiveness of exercise interventions on the physical and psychological wellbeing of patients with cancer. Exercise can improve muscle mass and strength and whole body oxygen uptake which are reduced during bed rest, infection and cancer treatments. Growing evidence is now supporting the effectiveness of exercise on specific populations such as women suffering from breast cancer. However, the effect of exercise on other populations such as children and patients suffering from other types of cancers is vague. Therefore, more research is needed to define scientific evidence based rehabilitation protocols for oncology patients with different types of cancer.
Machine summary:
Iranian Rehabilitation Journal, Vol. 10, No. 16, October 2012 Reviews/Short communication Exercise as a Treatment to Improve Quality Of Life in Patients with Cancer (A Review of the Literature) Kasra MirHosseini University of Nottingham, Department of Orthopaedics and Accident Surgery, UK Abbas Rahimi1, PhD.
Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Hessam SoutAkbar2 University of Nottingham, Department of Orthopaedics and Accident Surgery, UK Introduction: Improvement in cancer care increases life expectancy of cancer patients, most of whom have experienced prolonged episodes of fatigue during and after their treatment.
Objectives: The purpose of the present article was to evaluate the current evidence to determine if exercise could be used as a safe and effective method to reduce fatigue and improve quality of life in these patients.
There is growing evidence that exercise is beneficial to cancer patients through improvements in physical, psychological and physiological abilities and functions, which increase quality of life as well as longevity (13).
The aim of this study was to examine the strength and weakness of the current evidence to determine if exercise could be used as a safe and effective method to improve quality of life in patients with cancer.
Several types of exercise interventions have been used in a variety of patient trials to measure differences in cardiopulmonary fitness, strength, weight, body composition, insulin sensitivity, fatigue and quality of life.
Although the efficiency of exercise in improving physical fitness is shown in these populations, its effect on fatigue and quality of life of these patients is not yet well understood.