Women cancer survivors need to prioritize rebuilding strength and resuming active lives to fend off life-limiting changes as they age. And a new study suggests a need for health care providers to offer more structured guidance in how to regain physical function, according to a researcher at Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Elderly cancer survivors had more functional limitations than women who had never been diagnosed with cancer, according to a study published today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It suggests that health interventions that help elderly cancer survivors gain and maintain physical activity are very important, says principal author Carol Sweeny, an investigator with Huntsman Cancer Institute and an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah.
Many of the daily activities that are limited are basic and important to independence, including the ability to do housework, climb stairs or prepare meals.
Sweeny said the researchers already knew that in the short term, following cancer treatment, people report limitations in their activities. The key question for the researchers was whether those limitations persist longer than five years and whether being elderly has an effect.
"We found a good news, bad news scenario," she said. "Many long-term survivors didn't report many of the limitations. But the elderly survivors did report many more."
Sweeny and her colleagues studied data from 25,719 women in the Iowa Women's Health Study. The women, who had a median age of 72 at the time they completed questionnaires in 1997, were asked about their physical ability to perform physical activities such as walking half a mile or preparing most of their own meals.
About a third of the elderly in general report they have difficulties with such tasks, including walking up and down a flight of stairs unassisted. Still, elderly cancer survivors more often reported limitations.
The study didn't focus on what types of cancer but rather looked at any cancer. Among respondents, Sweeny said, breast cancer was the most common diagnosis.
The researchers found that five-year survivors more often reported being physically limited than women who had never had cancer, including inability to do heavy housework, to walk half a mile or to walk up or down stairs. In all cases, the majority of women questioned could perform the task, but the number of those who could not was significantly higher among women cancer survivors.
The article says, "New knowledge must be generated at the cancer/aging interface and applied for optimal results for our aging and older cancer survivors. We have an urgent need to educate a generation of health care professionals equipped to research, develop and deliver interventions to prevent or ameliorate the long-term and late effects of cancer survivorship."
The journal is published by Oxford University Press.
E-mail: lois@desnews.com