Journal Article

Longitudinal assessment of post-surgical physical activity in endometrial and ovarian cancer patients

Gorzelitz, Jessica, Rumble, Meredith, Rose, Stephen L., Costanzo, Erin S., Cadmus-Bertram, Lisa, Spencer, Ryan J.

2019

Overview

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. 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. 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. 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.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Accelerometers / Accelerometry - instrumentation / Aged / Cancer / Cancer Survivors - psychology / Chemotherapy / Demographics / Endometrial cancer / Endometrial Neoplasms - rehabilitation / Endometrial Neoplasms - surgery / Endometrium / Engineering and Technology / Exercise / Exercise - psychology / Female / Gynecology / Health Promotion / Humans / Kinesiology / Longitudinal Studies / Medical diagnosis / Medical prognosis / Medicine and Health Sciences / Middle Aged / Nutrition / Obstetrics / Oncology / Ovarian cancer / Ovarian carcinoma / Ovarian Neoplasms - rehabilitation / Ovarian Neoplasms - surgery / Patients / Physical activity / Physical fitness / Postoperative Period / Public health / Quality of life / Regression Analysis / Research and Analysis Methods / Surgery / Survival / Trajectories / Uterine cancer / Wearable Electronic Devices / Womens health