A Home-based Physical Activity Intervention in Breast Cancer Survivors

Due to the prevalence of treatment-related health concerns and increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome, recurrence and cardiovascular disease, breast cancer survivors may require diagnostic, therapeutic, supportive or palliative services for many years post-diagnosis. Encouraging breast cancer survivors to adopt a healthy lifestyle post-treatment may reduce the healthcare burden resulting from treatment-related sequelae and improve survival. In particular, higher levels of physical activity (PA) may positively influence some of these side-effects of treatment, enhance quality of life and reduce risk of recurrence and all-cause and breast cancer-related mortality. However, PA levels are generally low among breast cancer survivors and many women decrease their PA following diagnosis. Therefore, interventions are required to improve the post-diagnosis PA levels of breast cancer survivors. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have found improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, HRQoL, fatigue and weight maintenance in breast cancer survivors participating in PA interventions compared with control groups. However, most of these RCTs utilised facility-based interventions, which may limit their patients who have trouble accessing exercise facilities due to transportation or time-related difficulties. To overcome these problems home-based PA interventions have been investigated and have generally reported good adherence and positive effects on health, fitness and HRQoL outcomes. However, there is a lack of relevant interventions in the United Kingdom.