Combined aerobic, strength exercise improves quality of life for kidney cancer survivors

Kidney cancer survivors who meet the guidelines for combined aerobic and strength exercises may experience a better quality of life (QoL), a recent study suggests.

Researchers identified 703 kidney cancer survivors (mean age 65.0±11.1 years; 62.9 percent male) using a provincial registry and administered a survey designed to collect information about exercise and QoL. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to evaluate the primary outcome of QoL differences across the four exercise guidelines.

Only 15.9 percent (n=112) of the survivors reported aerobic exercise levels that met the aerobic-only guidelines. This rate was worse for the combined exercise (10.1 percent; n=71) and strength-only (8.8 percent; n=62) guidelines. Majority of the participants (65.1 percent; n=458) met neither guideline.

Meeting the guidelines for combined exercise guidelines resulted in better Trial Outcome Index-Fatigue (TOI-F) than meeting neither guideline (mean difference [MD], 12.3 points; 95 percent CI, 7.6–17.0; p<0.001).

TOI-F outcomes were also better in those who met the combined exercise guidelines than in those who satisfied the strength-only (MD, 7.3; 1.1–13.6; p=0.021) and aerobic-only (MD, 5.4; –0.0–10.8; p=0.051) guidelines.

In turn, meeting the aerobic-only (p<0.001) or strength-only (p=0.045) guidelines were significantly superior to meeting neither exercise guideline. Meeting either guideline was not significantly better than each other (p=0.50).

“Our study suggests that exercise programmes should target both aerobic and strength exercise for additional QoL benefits in [kidney cancer survivors]. For [those] who are unable or unwilling to perform both exercise guidelines, it appears that either exercise guideline is better than no exercise for QoL,” said researchers.