Open AccessLongitudinal assessment of post-surgical physical activity in endometrial and ovarian cancer patients
Author(s) -
Jessica Gorzelitz,
Erin S. Costanzo,
Ryan Spencer,
Meredith E. Rumble,
Stephen L. Rose,
Lisa Cadmus-Bertram
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0223791
Subject(s) - medicine , endometrial cancer , survivorship curve , physical activity , psychological intervention , ovarian cancer , cancer , physical therapy , oncology , psychiatry
Objective Physical activity plays a key role in cancer survivorship. The purpose of this investigation was to (a) describe the post-surgical physical activity trajectories of endometrial (n = 65) and ovarian (n = 31) cancer patients and (b) identify clinical and demographic predictors of physical activity over time. Methods 96 participants wore an Actiwatch accelerometer for three days at each of three time points (one week, one month and four months) after surgical intervention for their endometrial or ovarian cancer diagnosis. Analyses were conducted using linear mixed effects regression modeling in SAS 9.4. Results For both tumor types, although physical activity levels increased with time after surgery, even at four months patients were performing only a small fraction of the 150 minutes of recommended weekly moderate to vigorous physical activity. At 1 week, subjects were completing on average 14 minutes/week (SD = 4) of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, compared to 14 minutes/week (SD = 2) of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity at four months post-surgery ( p < .05). Better self-rated health was associated with higher physical activity ( p = 0.02) in endometrial cancer survivors only. BMI, age, surgery type and use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy were not associated with activity over time. Conclusions Our findings suggest that physical activity levels are different for those with better self-rated health, but those individuals are still insufficiently active. This study adds new information describing the trajectories and variables that influence physical activity in gynecologic cancer survivors after surgery and highlights the need for health promotion interventions in this population.