Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Apr 5, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 5, 2024 - May 31, 2024
Date Accepted: Feb 26, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Efficacy of a digital post-operative rehabilitation intervention in primary liver cancer patients: a randomized controlled trial
ABSTRACT
Background:
Rehabilitation is considered a fundamental component of cancer treatment, especially for patients undergoing cancer surgery. In contrast to conventional rehabilitation education, digital rehabilitation has the potential to improve patients’ access to post-operative rehabilitation programs. While Digital health have rapidly emerged to aid patients with various diseases, their clinical efficacy in the recovery of patients with primary liver cancer (PLC) undergoing hepatectomy remains inadequately investigated.
Objective:
To evaluate whether a digital post-operative rehabilitation intervention is efficient in improving physical fitness, enhance exercise adherence and alleviate fatigue among patients with PLC after hepatectomy.
Methods:
A randomized controlled trial was undertaken across two university-affiliated hospitals in Eastern China. 100 participants were enrolled in this study and were allocated randomly to either the digital health (Intervention group, n=50) or the rehabilitation manual-based group (Control group, n=50) at a 1:1 ratio. Patients were unblinded and prospectively followed for the intervention of 3 weeks. Outcome measures included physical fitness, exercise adherence, and status of fatigue.
Results:
Overall, 91 out of 100 patients completed the research and were evaluated after 3 weeks’ intervention. The Digital health group showed better cardiopulmonary endurance than the control group. The mean difference in the change from baseline between the groups was 70.21 meters (95% CI = 0.730 to 82.869, P= 0.046). No statistically significant effects were found for grip strength, 5-repetition-sit-to-stand test time (5R-STST) and fatigue. The exercise adherence in the Digital health group was higher than that in the control group (x2=15.871, P<.001).
Conclusions:
The results findings suggested that the implementation of digital health had positive impact on recovery in exercise capacity after hepatectomy. In addition, rehabilitation exercise mode based on digital health has the potential to improve the exercise adherence of patients with PLC compared with conventional manual-based rehabilitation guidance. Clinical Trial: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (http://www.chictr.org.cn) with registration number: ChiCTR2100052911 on November 6, 2021.
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