Abstract
SummaryCancer prehabilitation uses the pretreatment time period to prevent a treatment-related functional decline and its subsequent consequences, and therefore occurs between the time of cancer diagnosis and the beginning of acute cancer treatment. This intervention has been shown to improve functional status, physical and psychological health outcomes and decrease overall health care costs. Currently there are several unimodal and one multimodal cancer prehabilitation regimens. Unimodal cancer prehabilitation includes exercise only, and multimodal cancer prehabilitation regimens are combinations of different interventions such as exercise, patient information and education, nutrition, psychologic counseling such as psycho-oncology, smoking cessation and reduction of alcohol consumption. Both approaches have the goal to improve physical capacity and mental health and to enable cancer patients to cope with the upcoming stress of the specific cancer-related treatment they need. Furthermore, cancer prehabilitation can support cancer patients to better participate in cancer rehabilitation after cancer treatment and maintain their ability to engage in premorbid activities. A growing body of scientific evidence confirms the importance of cancer prehabilitation. Further research is needed to study effectiveness and efficiency as well as clinical aspects of unimodal and multimodal cancer prehabilitation interventions.
Highlights
During the last few decades, modern cancer treatment with increasing survival rates has put the focus on rehabilitation in cancer survivorship, and cancer rehabilitation has been shown to play an important role in the cancer care continuum by improving quality of life, functional performance, and participation [1, 2]
Cancer prehabilitation is a kind of pretreatment regimen with the intention to improve the functional status of patients diagnosed with cancer, but before starting cancer treatment
In addition to an improved functional status, which leads to better effectiveness of the necessary cancer treatments, an improvement in mental health and quality of life, a reduction in morbidity, and reduced health care costs can be seen as further expected benefits of cancer prehabilitation in cancer patients [3, 4, 6]
Summary
During the last few decades, modern cancer treatment with increasing survival rates has put the focus on rehabilitation in cancer survivorship, and cancer rehabilitation has been shown to play an important role in the cancer care continuum by improving quality of life, functional performance, and participation [1, 2]. Cancer prehabilitation is a kind of pretreatment regimen with the intention to improve the functional status of patients diagnosed with cancer, but before starting cancer treatment It is a quite modern strategy in the continuum of cancer care, with the aim of improving the ability of cancer patients to obtain necessary cancer treatment, and to increase their compliance and adherence concerning all rehabilitation efforts during and after cancer treatment [3,4,5,6]. K short review has been described to be “a systematic process of improving the physical, psychosocial, and nutritional status of cancer patients between diagnosis and post treatment recovery to increase the ability to cope with the upcoming physiological stress of the specific cancer-related therapy” [4, 5] This narrative, short review aims to give a survey about this quite modern intervention
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