Methodological consideration for a physical activity intervention in breast cancer population: An umbrella review

Breast cancer patients and survivors are increasing in the last years such as their mean age. A feasible and useful complementary intervention to improve physical and psychological health, and decrease some disease symptoms seems to be physical activity. Consequently, this umbrella review wanted to analyze the protocols of different physical activity interventions and to eventually propose a standard operating procedure for possible exercise training in breast cancer patients.Design, Data sources, Eligibility criteria. The electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science were searched till 25 March 2022 to detect all systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials on this topic. The studies were analyzed narratively and evaluated with a scale to assess their quality.

The studies presented heterogeneity in their population included in terms of disease stage and treatments, intervention protocols and outcomes evaluated. This made difficult to synthesize the findings.

It was not possible to propose a standard operating procedure but some indications were proposed to provide feedback for future studies. Ideally, an intervention should be composed of combined training (aerobic and resistance training) with a component of a mindfulness intervention, with an intensity from moderate to high, and 3 times a week. The intervention should be supervised in the first period and then it could be home-based. Exercise training should be personalized to the patients treated.