Physical Activities in Oral Cavity and Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients after Major Treatments
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Fang, Yuan-Yuan
Abstract
The cancer treatment caused damage to the patients. Even after completing the treatment, patient still suffer from the side effects of treatment, especially is fatigue, sleep disturbance, and symptom severity. The regular physical activity is benefit to relieve fatigue, sleep disturbance, and symptom distress. For this reason, the aims of this study were (1) to examine the status of physical activity after cancer treatment; (2) to examine the relationship between physical activity, sleep disturbance, and symptom distress in oral cavity and oropharyngeal cancer patients in Taiwan.
Using cross-sectional study design and purposeful sampling, then 79 patients were recruited from one medical center in Northern Taiwan and its Southern branch hospital in this study. We collected data by the structured questionnaires which included basic information, physical activity status, fatigue, sleep disturbance, and symptom distress situations. In addition to the questionnaires, the data was coordinated with the actual measurement of physical fitness including muscle power (gripping power and hip flexor muscle power), body composition (body mass index and waist-hip ratio), and flexibility (cervical range of motion and standing forward bending test). The collected data were using descriptive statistics, one way ANOVA, and multiple comparison procedures to analyze.
The results showed that patients usually engaged in light exercise after completed the treatment. Comparing the measured values of physical fitness in patients with norm group in Taiwan, the physical fitness in patients was in the poor grades. Even though the patients had done exercise, the physical fitness wasn’t enhancement because of the activity intensity was not enough. This situation is most common in younger patients.
The movement was meted the proposed standards in patients who had lower degree of fatigue interference (p <0.01) and shorter duration of fatigue (p <0.05), and less symptom distress (p =0.05). Although physical activity was not significantly associated with sleep problems, the patient who meted the recommended standards had lower mean score in sleep problem and sleep disturbance than sedentary participants.
This study showed increasing physical activity is helpful to reduce fatigue and symptom distress. If the goal is to improve the patients’ sleep quality, it will be required to strengthen the intensity and duration of physical activity. The result in this study might be a reference for health education in physical activity in clinical care, and may be the basis for further study to design related interventions.
Subjects
Oral cancer
Physical Activity
Fatigue
Sleep Disturbance
Symptom Severity
SDGs
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