Home-Based Exercise Prehabilitation Program for Improvement of Fitness and Treatment Tolerance among Older Patients with Resectable Hepatobiliary Cancer Undergoing Surgery
This clinical trial evaluates a home-based exercise program for improving fitness and treatment tolerance among older patients with hepatobiliary (liver, bile ducts, and gallbladder) cancer that can be removed by surgery (resectable) who are undergoing surgery. As the world's population ages rapidly, many older adults are living to a much more advanced age than before. Consequently, medical conditions that require surgical interventions such as solid organ cancers are also getting more common. Morbidity (amount of disease within a population) rates following liver surgery are high, especially among older adult patients. For hepatobiliary cancers, the evidence linking frailty and geriatric assessment variables to negative outcomes is limited, but generally shows that frailty, functional dependency, comorbidity (more than one disease or condition within the body at the same time), and sarcopenia (muscle loss and strength that occurs with aging) predict postoperative (after surgery) complications and survival. Rehabilitation that is started in the postoperative period aims to help patients regain physical fitness and robustness (quality of being strong, and healthy or unlikely to break) to preoperative levels. However, prehabilitation (process of improving the body and mind before surgery) may be more effective in bringing the fitness level of older adults to a higher level before they go for surgery. Information gathered from this study may help researchers learn how a home-based exercise prehabilitation program may improve fitness and treatment tolerance among older patients with resectable hepatobiliary cancer undergoing surgery.