AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE STAY STRONG CANCER REHABILITATION PROGRAM

Abstract

Cancer and its treatment are associated with numerous short and long-term side effects. Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have shown that exercise improves fitness, which helps mitigate these side effects. However, RCTs are strict in terms of patient eligibility and exercise prescription which does not fully represent what occurs in a “real-world” setting. It remains unclear whether pragmatic exercise programs, which are open to everyone and utilize a more individualized exercise prescription produce similar benefits to RCTs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the SSCRP; a 12-week pragmatic program on physical fitness in cancer survivors (CS). Physical fitness was assessed pre- and post-intervention using RHR, 6MWT, 30CST, FFRT, and HGST. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests showed significant improvements in all physical measures for the whole group and subgroups except for HGSTNon-dom for males (p=0.126) and other cancer (p=0.016) and FFRT (0.029) in males.