Radiotherapy has become a crucial part of breast cancer treatment, it can also have a severe influence on patients’ quality of life, including their emotional, physical, and social wellbeing. It can also cause cancer-related fatigue.
Progressively, with the ultimate target of participants meeting the national guideline for recommended exercise levels,” he said.
“However, the exercise programs were relative to the participants’ fitness capacity, and we found even much smaller dosages of exercise than those recommended in the national guidelines can have significant effects on cancer-related fatigue and health-related quality of living during and after radiotherapy.”
The study also found once participants began an exercise program, most stuck with it. The exercise group reported significant improvements in mild, moderate and vigorous physical activity up to 12 months after the supervised exercise program finished.
“The exercise program in this study seems to have induced changes in the participants’ behaviour around physical activity,” Dr Mavropalias said.”Thus, apart from the direct beneficial effects on reduction in cancer-related fatigue and improving health-related quality of life during radiotherapy, home-based exercise protocols might result in changes in the physical activity of participants that persist well after the end of the program.”
‘The effects of home-based exercise therapy for breast cancer-related fatigue induced by radical radiotherapy’
