SPECIAL ISSUE : "Integrative medicine in oncology: another step forward" - PHYSIOTHERAPY AND PHYSICAL EXERCISE IN CANCER PATIENTS: A REVIEW

Oncological rehabilitation as well as exercise and physiotherapy are sound treatments to support traditional medical treatments. They aim to optimize the quality of life during the disease, helping not only the patient who is affected but the entire context, including the family one, to gradually regain standard of living as similar to those prior to the onset of the disease. In fact, oncological rehabilitation aims to minimize physical disability, functional, cognitive and/or psychological de cits that can often accompany the disease and occur during or following the tumor and related therapies. Approximately one quarter of cancer cases diagnosed today could imply a rather important impoverishment of the quality of life and such as to require this specialist support. Cancer rehabilitation has signi cant repercussions also with regard to anxiety symptoms and mood depression, improving the perceived quality of life and favoring the resumption of an injured function, of motility, the containment of some disease-related symptoms - such lymphedema after breast surgery.