The effect of designed exercise programme on quality of life in women with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy

Abstract

The researchers sought to investigate the effect of a designed exercise programme on the quality of life (QOL) in women with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy. Regarding the destructive effects of breast cancer and chemotherapy on women's lifestyle and well-being, health-care providers have the responsibility of searching for effective and safe programmes in order to bring an improvement to the patients' QOL. In a quasi-experimental design, 56 women with breast cancer receiving chemotherapy in an Iranian cancer institution were chosen; and then divided into two control and experiment groups consisting of 28 participants each. The patients in the experiment group followed a designed exercise programme characterized with daily physical exercises, 3-5 days per week, which lasted for 9 weeks. The Quality of Life-Breast Cancer (QOL-BC) questionnaire was employed to measure the participants' QOL in physical, emotional and social dimensions before and after the intervention. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized for data analysis. No significant differences were found in the QOL dimensions between two groups before the manipulation; but significant differences in physical (p = 0.004), emotional (p = 0.01), social (p = 0.02) and spiritual (p = 0.45) dimensions as well as the total QOL (p = 0.003) after the intervention, were indicative of the effectiveness of the programme. Based on the study findings, it is recommended that this programme can be employed as an effective means of improving the QOL among patients with breast cancer.