Evaluation of a Comprehensive Rehabilitation Program for Post-Treatment Patients With Cancer

Abstract

Multidisciplinary rehabilitation should become part of the total care plan for patients with cancer.

Effectiveness of Multidimensional Cancer Survivor Rehabilitation and Cost-Effectiveness of Cancer Rehabilitation in General: A Systematic Review

“…Three articles were identified through hand searching, leading to a total of 22 articles included. Sixteen articles [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] on the effectiveness of multidimensional cancer survivor rehabilitation were included, the data from which originated from 11 trials. The data from one of those trials were presented in two complementary articles [46,47] and the data from another trial were used in four articles [42][43][44][45].…”

“…Articles measuring subscales of fatigue (n ϭ 8) found statistically significant benefits, but not for all subscales [41,46] or for all measurements [37]. For physical outcome measures, such as muscle strength, physical functioning, and energy levels, 12 of 13 articles reported significant benefits [32,34,[37][38][39][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. HRQoL and emotional, cognitive, psychological, and social outcome measures, however, varied strongly among studies, although none reported significant deteriorations.…”

“…Sixteen articles met the selection criteria for multidimensional cancer rehabilitation effectiveness studies [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] (Table 2). Of these, the eight Dutch articles originate from four separate trials.…”

“…Of these, the eight Dutch articles originate from four separate trials. The evaluated interventions all consisted of exercise combined with inpatient rehabilitation programs [35,36], CBT [39,[42][43][44][45], psychological education [33,34,37], psychological education and information [41,46,47], self-help education [38], information support [40], and information support plus CBT [32]. Interventions lasted 4 -15 weeks.…”

“…RCTs included 21-199 participants; the longitudinal study's sample size was 658. Participants were survivors of any type of cancer [32,34,37,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47], breast cancer [33,35,36,39,40], and gastric cancer [38]. Outcome measurements were performed directly at the end of the intervention [34, 37, 39 -41, 43, 45, 47] [32,35].…”