Exercise, nutrition, and psychological support for kidney cancer: a scoping review

To comprehensively review the available literature on prehabilitation and rehabilitation exercise, nutrition, and psychological support interventions for patients with kidney cancer (KC), to summarise the clinically relevant efficacy and cost-effectiveness of interventions, to expose key knowledge gaps, and to inform future investigations and initiatives.

This review was performed according to the per Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Extension for Scoping Reviews Guidelines. We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing programmes of prehabilitation or rehabilitation, exercise, psychological support, or nutrition components in patients with KC or KC caregivers from January 2004 to March 2022. Statistically significant positive (SS+) and negative (SS-) results were summarised.

The systematic search yielded 10 968 records including 18 RCTs, involving 2774 unique subjects, 706 of whom were KC patients/survivors. None included caregivers or assessed cost-effectiveness. Two interventions were implemented before surgery, one was implemented prior to initiation of systemic therapy, eight were implemented during systemic or radiation therapy, three were implemented after treatment, while implementation time was not specified for four interventions.

Most (14/18) RCTs involving exercise, nutrition, psychological support, or prehabilitative or rehabilitative programmes for KC performed to date demonstrated SS+ results. The evidence was most robust regarding previously evaluated psychological support, especially mindfulness-based interventions (9/10 studies demonstrating SS+ improvement in primary outcomes), followed by therapeutically valid exercise with/without psychological support (5/8 RCTs demonstrated efficacy), then nutrition or pharmacological interventions (2/5 demonstrated efficacy). Level 1 evidence supports counselling patients and referral to mindfulness-based psychological therapy along with physical therapy or physical medicine and rehabilitation, as well as consideration of preoperative carbohydrate drinks. No studies have examined impact on caregivers, or cost-effectiveness, which are both critical areas for future study.