Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2019

Does a prescribed, supervised exercise program correlate with better disease progression outcomes in oncology patients who are on active anti-cancer treatments? A retrospective observational cohort study (#385)

Georgia Salamon 1 , Lauren Whiting 2 , Daniella Dougherty 2
  1. Adelaide Cancer Centre, Kurralta Park
  2. Lift Cancer Care Services, Kurralta Park, South Australia, Australia

Exercise has well-established benefits in both health and disease and within the oncology setting. It is known that exercise can improve symptom control, reduce adverse side effects from treatment and improve quality of life1,2. Importantly, post diagnosis exercise can enhance survivorship by up to 60% via both cancer-related and all-cause mortality3,4. The mechanism for this significant effect is unclear but may be due to systemic and/or direct effect of the tumour itself. This is a planned retrospective cohort study to commence in August 2019, which aims to demonstrate the effect of a prescribed, supervised exercise regimen on clinical oncology patients undergoing active anti-cancer treatments. The data from two patient cohorts will be analysed; patients attending the Adelaide Cancer Centre (ACC) who have been participating in the LIFT exercise program at Lift Cancer Care Services, an exercise oncology clinic, and an aged, gender and diagnosis matched cohort from the ACC who are naïve to a supervised exercise program. Disease stage will be classified at baseline and the primary outcome of interest is disease progression which will be measured by tumour specific staging variables including disease volume, metastasis and tumour markers and will guide a ordered categorical outcome classification of disease progression, no change or disease regression at month 6 and month 12. Secondary outcomes of interest include disease partial remission, complete remission, local progression, new metastatic disease, metastatic progression, any hospitalization and death. The Primary outcome will be analysed using ordered logistic regression modelling to explore the correlation between exercise and the disease progression. This study will be completed at ACC and Lift Cancer Care Services with an estimated completion date of February 2020.

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