Patients with lung cancer who have undergone lung resection and received both team empowerment training and engaged in high-intensity interval training (HIIT) experienced improvements in exercise capacity, anxiety, depression, dyspnea, and exercise self-efficacy compared with a control group and a single intervention group, according to recent results from a hospital-based short-term study. This study was published in Cancer Nursing.

The study objective was to evaluate the potential effects of HIIT coupled with team empowerment education on patients with lung cancer who underwent resection. Cancer and surgical resection significantly burden patients with lung cancer, with negative effects on both physiology and psychology. Improving self-efficacy during HIIT could optimize outcomes and benefits of pulmonary rehabilitation in these patients.

In this quasi-experimental trial with a pretest-posttest structure, 90 patients with lung cancer who underwent surgical resection were assigned to 3 groups. One group was the combined intervention group of both HIIT and team empowerment education (27/30 in analysis), one group was a single intervention (28/30 in analysis), and one group was a control group that received routine, standard care (28/30 in analysis).

This trial assessed dyspnea, exercise capacity, exercise self-efficacy, anxiety, depression, postoperative indwelling time of thoracic drainage tube, and total in-hospital stay across the 3 arms of the study.

Results assessed per protocol showed that the group that received both interventions experienced improvements in exercise capacity, anxiety, depression, dyspnea, and exercise self-efficacy. However, postoperative indwelling time of thoracic drainage tube and total in-hospital stay were not significantly different across the 3 groups.

HIIT, Empowerment Training Improve Perioperative Outcomes in Lung Cancer

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