Prescription of Physical Activity for Patients with Rectal Cancer during Neoadjuvant Therapy

Abstract

Physical activity (PA) is an important health behaviour in any population and also in patients with cancer. In spite of evident benefits, prescription of exercise has not been added to general recommendations. Lack of prospective data about survival, rejection by oncologists to prescribe PA and discordant information from different physicians could explain it. Prescription of exercise through a set of recommendations, supervised training, as well as, reinforcement of these recommendations by all the physicians in charge of the patient could have an impact in the adherence to guidelines. Rectal cancer patients during neoadjuvant therapy make up an ideal setting to study this hypothesis in a multidisciplinary approach during a limited an reproducible period. We studied patients diagnosed with rectal cancer, candidates to neoadjuvant therapy. Basal evaluation includes BMI, accelerometry, medical and physical evaluation, validated quality of life and physicological distress scales. Six sessions of supervised exercise trainning during the neoadjuvant period will be performed. Reccomendations about amount and quality (aerobic and resistive) of PA will be done by a specialist. After neoadjuvant treatment a new evaluation consisting of accelerometry, BMI, two scales as well as medical and physical evaluation will be performed again. These variables will be adherence to physical exercise, change in physical activity evaluated by accelerometry, changes in aerobic capacity and muscular strenght , changes in quality of life, changes in physicological distress and changes in BMI.