Cardiac Rehabilitation Programs for Cancer Survivors: A Scoping Review

Participation in cardiac rehabilitation is associated with improved quality of life and physical functioning and may be an effective strategy to assist in the recovery from cancer. We conducted a scoping review to identify studies that enrolled cancer survivors into cardiac rehabilitation programs.

We identified nine studies that included 662 cancer survivors. Five studies integrated cancer survivors and cardiac patients into the same sessions, three studies developed cancer-only rehabilitation sessions, and one study did not report details on the rehabilitation sessions. On average, more than 60% of enrolled cancer survivors completed the rehabilitation programs and many health and psychosocial outcomes improved after rehabilitation.

Cardiac rehabilitation appears to be acceptable and favorably impacts many health and psychosocial outcomes among cancer survivors. Future research should consider randomized controlled trial study designs, enrolling diverse survivor populations, and using a set of core physical function and psychosocial outcomes.