With over 12 million cancer survivors relying on supportive care across the EU, it is essential to provide them with (cost-)effective interventions tailored to their specific needs. Many survivors suffer from long-term side effects that can lower their quality of life (QoL), functioning, and productivity. Exercise interventions have proven to be uniquely beneficial in managing both physical and psychological complaints. However, their effects are strongest when tailored to a patient's specific burden, e.g. fatigue, low physical fitness, anxiety and depressive symptoms or chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. Moreover, the use of exercise interventions in supportive cancer care is still limited due to a lack of availability, a lack of accessibility caused by time and travel constraints and low awareness. To tackle these hurdles, the PREFERABLE-II consortium sets out to design and demonstrate the (cost-)effectiveness of a novel exercise intervention that:
1) will be tailored to the side effect that bothers the survivor the most, by use of a modular design,
2) can be implemented at home, with live-remote supervision from a national broadcast centre,
3) is available to all cancer survivors who keep having complaints after their chemotherapy treatment, and
4) incorporates improved patient-centred communication and shared decision making.
Results of our RCT, enrolling 352 cancer survivors, will be translated into guideline recommendations for exercise-oncology. Extensive ethical, legal and social impact components of the project will reveal barriers and facilitators of live-remote supervised exercise and provide policy recommendations to further support implementation. Finally, we will create communication standards and an education module for healthcare professionals to train the future workforce. As such, PREFERABLE-II contributes to improving the QoL of cancer survivors by lowering the burden of side effects, while also improving availability, accessibility and awareness of exercise-based supportive care interventions.
