Brisk walking: No-cost option for patients to improve cancer outcomes

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I’m Maurie Markman, MD, from Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia. I wanted to discuss a highly provocative paper that I think deserves attention. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, titled Physical Activity in Stage III Colon Cancer: CALGB/SWOG 80702 (Alliance).

This is an incredibly important paper that highlights something that has not been emphasized enough in oncology practice. What are the things that we can recommend to our patients that are not expensive, but which they can do for themselves to impact a potential for adding to a positive outcome? In this case, we’re talking about physical activity.

This was an extremely well-conducted study. It was a prospective cohort study that was built into an ongoing phase 3 randomized, multicenter study looking at adjuvant therapy of stage III colon cancer. The median follow-up in this population was almost 6 years. We’re talking about 1,696 patients.

The investigators did a survey, asking patients when they started treatment and then a short time after that, and measured the level of recreational physical activity. They didn’t do a design. They asked the individuals how much activity they had.

There were a number of analyses done in terms of looking at this that were reported in the paper. I want to highlight one because it’s so simple. The investigators looked at brisk walking. For brisk walking, the 3-year disease-free survival was 81.7% for individuals who had less than 1 hour per week of brisk walking versus 88.4% for individuals who walked briskly more than 3 hours per week.

Walking an additional 2 hours or more per week, prospectively viewed in individuals who had the same baseline characteristics otherwise, impacted disease-free survival in stage III colon cancer. There is no additional expense. It’s walking. There were other activities that were looked at here, including aerobic activities.

The bottom line is that physical activity is positive, is not expensive, and focuses on what the individual patient can do for themselves. It’s something I believe that, in the oncology community, we need to emphasize more.

I encourage you to review this paper and use your own opinion as to what you want to do with this information, but I strongly urge you to look at this – and other types of activities – that we can recommend that individuals do themselves to impact their outcomes related to cancer.

Dr. Markman is a clinical professor of medicine at Drexel University, Philadelphia. He reported conflicts of interest with Genentech, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Clovis, and Amgen.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I’m Maurie Markman, MD, from Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia. I wanted to discuss a highly provocative paper that I think deserves attention. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, titled Physical Activity in Stage III Colon Cancer: CALGB/SWOG 80702 (Alliance).

This is an incredibly important paper that highlights something that has not been emphasized enough in oncology practice. What are the things that we can recommend to our patients that are not expensive, but which they can do for themselves to impact a potential for adding to a positive outcome? In this case, we’re talking about physical activity.

This was an extremely well-conducted study. It was a prospective cohort study that was built into an ongoing phase 3 randomized, multicenter study looking at adjuvant therapy of stage III colon cancer. The median follow-up in this population was almost 6 years. We’re talking about 1,696 patients.

The investigators did a survey, asking patients when they started treatment and then a short time after that, and measured the level of recreational physical activity. They didn’t do a design. They asked the individuals how much activity they had.

There were a number of analyses done in terms of looking at this that were reported in the paper. I want to highlight one because it’s so simple. The investigators looked at brisk walking. For brisk walking, the 3-year disease-free survival was 81.7% for individuals who had less than 1 hour per week of brisk walking versus 88.4% for individuals who walked briskly more than 3 hours per week.

Walking an additional 2 hours or more per week, prospectively viewed in individuals who had the same baseline characteristics otherwise, impacted disease-free survival in stage III colon cancer. There is no additional expense. It’s walking. There were other activities that were looked at here, including aerobic activities.

The bottom line is that physical activity is positive, is not expensive, and focuses on what the individual patient can do for themselves. It’s something I believe that, in the oncology community, we need to emphasize more.

I encourage you to review this paper and use your own opinion as to what you want to do with this information, but I strongly urge you to look at this – and other types of activities – that we can recommend that individuals do themselves to impact their outcomes related to cancer.

Dr. Markman is a clinical professor of medicine at Drexel University, Philadelphia. He reported conflicts of interest with Genentech, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Clovis, and Amgen.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I’m Maurie Markman, MD, from Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Philadelphia. I wanted to discuss a highly provocative paper that I think deserves attention. It was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, titled Physical Activity in Stage III Colon Cancer: CALGB/SWOG 80702 (Alliance).

This is an incredibly important paper that highlights something that has not been emphasized enough in oncology practice. What are the things that we can recommend to our patients that are not expensive, but which they can do for themselves to impact a potential for adding to a positive outcome? In this case, we’re talking about physical activity.

This was an extremely well-conducted study. It was a prospective cohort study that was built into an ongoing phase 3 randomized, multicenter study looking at adjuvant therapy of stage III colon cancer. The median follow-up in this population was almost 6 years. We’re talking about 1,696 patients.

The investigators did a survey, asking patients when they started treatment and then a short time after that, and measured the level of recreational physical activity. They didn’t do a design. They asked the individuals how much activity they had.

There were a number of analyses done in terms of looking at this that were reported in the paper. I want to highlight one because it’s so simple. The investigators looked at brisk walking. For brisk walking, the 3-year disease-free survival was 81.7% for individuals who had less than 1 hour per week of brisk walking versus 88.4% for individuals who walked briskly more than 3 hours per week.

Walking an additional 2 hours or more per week, prospectively viewed in individuals who had the same baseline characteristics otherwise, impacted disease-free survival in stage III colon cancer. There is no additional expense. It’s walking. There were other activities that were looked at here, including aerobic activities.

The bottom line is that physical activity is positive, is not expensive, and focuses on what the individual patient can do for themselves. It’s something I believe that, in the oncology community, we need to emphasize more.

I encourage you to review this paper and use your own opinion as to what you want to do with this information, but I strongly urge you to look at this – and other types of activities – that we can recommend that individuals do themselves to impact their outcomes related to cancer.

Dr. Markman is a clinical professor of medicine at Drexel University, Philadelphia. He reported conflicts of interest with Genentech, AstraZeneca, Celgene, Clovis, and Amgen.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.