PHYSICAL EXERCISE AND QUALITY OF LIFE OF PATIENTS DIAGNOSED WITH COLORECTAL CANCER: SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction: Colorectal cancer is the third most diagnosed neoplasm in men and the second in women. Although treatment improves patient survival, the literature points to numerous adverse effects which culminates in reduced quality of life. In this sense, it is known that the practice of physical exercises brings great benefits to cancer patients and can improve the quality of life. Furthermore, it can be correlated to lower mortality and recurrence of the disease since such practice can increase the effectiveness of neoadjuvant treatments as well as decrease its side effects, such as cachexia and depression. Objective: Carry out a systematic review, in which the influence of physical exercise on the quality of life of patients affected by colon and/or rectal cancer will be demonstrated and discussed. Methods: A systematic literature review was carried out; non-randomized clinical trials of any year were included from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, and VHL platforms, without specific language delimitation, and analyzed the influence of physical exercise on the quality of life of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer, and for analysis of bias, the Cochrane Manual for the Development of Systematic Intervention Reviews was used. Results: Four studies were elected for inclusion in this review. Of these, three intervened with unsupervised aerobic exercises and one with semi-supervised aerobic exercises, all studies used the FACTC to analyze the quality of life of the groups before and after physical exercise interventions, some even used FACT-G and/or SF-12. Only one author found significance values in the variables of physical well-being, emotional well being, and functional well-being of the questionnaire, compared with the control group. The results presented demonstrated a lack of significance in the comparison between control groups and intervention groups in health-related quality of life. Conclusion: With the exception of the quality of life variables related to physical well-being, emotional well-being, and functional well-being in one of the studies, there was no significant influence on the increase in quality of life in patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer undergoing exercise practices compared with the control group.