Recreational Physical Activity and Outcomes After Breast Cancer in Women at High Familial Risk

Physical activity and quality of life in breast cancer survivors

OBJECTIVES

We reviewed the literature on breast cancer patients' physical activity and quality of life. This paper should urge health services and breast cancer survivors to continue appropriate physical activity and assess its advantages.

DESIGN

A systematic review was conducted.

DATA SOURCES

This systematic review used online databases: PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. A search from the beginning of 2018-2024 was conducted.

REVIEW METHOD

Medical Subject Headings (MESH) were used for keyword selection along with other target keywords, such as "Quality of life", "Breast cancer", "Chemotherapy", "Treatment side effects", "Patient experience", "Psychosocial well-being", "Physical functioning", "Emotional distress", and "Supportive care". We reviewed and included all English-language publications. A narrative synthesis was conducted to present the results of the studies.

RESULTS

The search using the keywords yielded a total of 135 studies. Each result was filtered again according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in a final total of 15 studies to be included in the systematic review.

CONCLUSION

The evidence supports the benefits of physical activity in enhancing the quality of life for breast cancer survivors, indicating that further prospective and intervention studies are needed.

Evidence-Based Interventions for Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities: What Works and Where the Gaps Are?

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has established an online repository of evidence-based cancer control programs (EBCCP) and increasingly calls for the usage of these EBCCPs to reduce the cancer burden. To inventory existing EBCCPs and identify remaining gaps, we summarized NCI's EBCCPs relevant to reducing breast cancer risk with an eye towards interventions that address multiple levels of influence in populations facing breast cancer disparities. For each program, the NCI EBCCP repository provides the following expert panel determined summary metrics: (a) program ratings (1-5 scale, 5 best) of research integrity, intervention impact, and dissemination capability, and (b) RE-AIM framework assessment (0-100%) of program reach, effectiveness, adoption, and implementation. We quantified the number of EBCCPs that met the quality criteria of receiving a score of ≥3 for research integrity, intervention impact, and dissemination capability, and receiving a score of ≥50% for available RE-AIM reach, effectiveness, adoption, and implementation. For breast cancer risk reduction, we assessed the presence and quality of EBCCPs related to physical activity (PA), obesity, alcohol, tobacco control in early life, breastfeeding, and environmental chemical exposures. Our review revealed several major gaps in EBCCPs for reducing the breast cancer burden: (1) there are no EBCCPs for key breast cancer risk factors including alcohol, breastfeeding, and environmental chemical exposures; (2) among the EBCPPs that exist for PA, obesity, and tobacco control in early life, only a small fraction (24%, 17% and 31%, respectively) met all the quality criteria (≥3 EBCCP scores and ≥50% RE-AIM scores) and; (3) of those that met the quality criteria, only two PA interventions, one obesity, and no tobacco control interventions addressed multiple levels of influence and were developed in populations facing breast cancer disparities. Thus, developing, evaluating, and disseminating interventions to address important risk factors and reduce breast cancer disparities are needed.