A Brief SMART Exercise Instant Messaging Support Intervention - a Pilot Study

Lung cancer is one of the most common cancer diseases, globally and locally. Several health benefits of increased physical activity (PA) have been reported for people with cancer. PA plays a critical role across the cancer trajectory, from prevention through to post-diagnosis and has been proposed as an alternative for improving physical and psychosocial health outcomes, reducing cancer recurrence, and cancer-specific and all-cause mortality. Although there are a variety of exercise intervention programs for cancer patients, those programs were quite intensive, requiring individuals to commit extra time and effort. Feeling of overwhelmed appointments, lack of time, other barriers, including high cost and limited access to facilities are the most frequently reported barriers that prevent people from starting and maintaining exercise. Hence, the investigators propose to use a brief messaging lifestyle modification intervention program to incorporating simple and easy-to-do patient-centred home-based lifestyle-integrated exercise into daily activities of patients with lung cancer. The aims are to explore the feasibility of using instant messaging to enhance physical activity and improve their fatigue, emotion and quality of life, and obtain feedback from patients for intervention and study design improvement.

Sex

All

Minimum age

18 Years

Maximum age

100 Years

Inclusion criteria

* Aged 18 years and above;
* Diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer or small cell lung cancer
* Fatigue symptom score ≥4 out of 10
* Self-reported engagement of \<150 minutes of moderate-intensity PA each week
* Ambulatory and capable of all self-care activities
* Either undergoing or finished oncology therapy and/or support care
* Mentally, cognitively and physically fit to join the trial
* Able to speak and read Chinese;
* Willing to complete the patient-reported outcome questionnaire
* Completion of the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire
* Possession of a smartphone with instant messaging functions such as WhatsApp or WeChat.

Exclusion criteria

* Those preparing for lung operation
* Skeletal fragility
* Serious active infection
* Inability to walk
* Severe respiratory insufficiency
* Uncontrolled pain
* Diagnosed psychiatric illness such as major depressive disorder

• BACKGROUNDGopalakrishnan S, Takemoto L; New Collective Author. Binding of actin to lens alpha crystallins. Curr Eye Res. 1992 Sep;11(9):929-33. doi: 10.3109/02713689209033490. PMID 1424733
• BACKGROUNDPeddle-McIntyre CJ, Singh F, Thomas R, Newton RU, Galvao DA, Cavalheri V. Exercise training for advanced lung cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2019 Feb 11;2(2):CD012685. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD012685.pub2. PMID 30741408