Congress Abstracts 2006

50

THE EFFECTS OF THE INDIVIDUALIZED EXERCISE PROGRAM IN PATIENTS WITH GASTRIC CANCER DURING CHEMOTHERAPY. Sun-Hee Kim, RN, Won-Hee Lee, PhD, RN, Cho-Ja Kim, PhD, RN, Joo-Hyung Kim, DrPH, MS, MPA, Yonsei University College of Nursing, Seoul, Korea; and Seoug-Hoon Noh, MD, PhD, and Hyun-Chol Jeoung, MD, PhD, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.

Many studies show that exercise is helpful to cancer patients. However, those studies often deal with a certain group of cancer patients, e.g. early stage Breast Cancer and Hematological Malignances.

It is thus needed to evaluate the accessibility of an exercise program on patients with advanced stage gastric cancer, the most common cancer in South Korea, as well as to consider multidimensional outcome variables representing the effects of exercise program.

This study was intended to evaluate the effects of an individualized exercise program on cancer related fatigue, physical function, attention function and emotional status in gastric cancer patients during chemotherapy.

The intervention was based on the Winningham's Psychobiological-Entropy Model.

Thirty patients were recruited through a randomized control clinical trial design.

The exercise group of sixteen patients performed aerobic exercise, designed to reflect each patient's exercise ability and preference, three or four times a week (two times in the week injected Adriamycin). They were directed based on an exercise education protocol.

The primary outcome is cancer related fatigue (revised Piper fatigue scale). Physical function (12 minute walk test, MOS SF-36), attention function (Cimprich's Attention function test) and emotional status (LASA scale) are secondary outcomes. Data was collected at baseline, the fourth week, and finally the eighth week. The data were analyzed using SPSS 11.5; Repeated measure ANOVA, Bonferroni.

Upon completion of the program in the exercise group, a significant improvement was found in cancer related fatigue (p=.009) and physical function (p=.001, p=.000). To the contrary, the control group produced a significant negative change.

Patients in the exercise group reported no change in attention function (p=.061) and emotional status (p=.900), but the control group's patients marked significant negative change.

From those results, the effectiveness of the program was confirmed with regard to cancer related fatigue, physical function, attention function and emotional status.

Despite a short period of intervention and small-sized sample, the homogeneity of each group and well-designed program make the effect of the program very significant.