Clinical Research Directory

Aerobic Exercise is Cardio-protective in Hemato-oncological Disease and New-onset Chemotherapy

Oncological diseases are the main cause of death in developed countries and also in Uruguay. Advances in therapeutics have made possible to aspire to cure and in other cases long-term remission with a significant increase in survival and the transformation of cancer into a chronic disease. Chemotherapy treatments have some side effects and cardiotoxicity is well known within them. Heart failure (HF) is a progressive pathology, with high mortality and high resource requirements of the health system with a prognosis that may be worse than some types of cancers. The treatment of established systolic dysfunction and symptomatic HF is mainly based on the indication of inhibitors of the angiotensin-converting enzyme and beta-blockers among other pharmaceutical and no pharmaceutical interventions. Aerobic physical exercise, as a therapeutic intervention, reverses the physiopathological changes that are presumed to lead to HF in sedentary people and it is known, it is feasible to execute an exercise program in cancer patients. However, effective treatments for the primary prevention of systolic dysfunction are not well known. Our hypothesis is that an aerobic physical exercise program for at least 3 months, in subjects with lymphoma and new-onset chemotherapy, is effective in preventing left ventricular systolic dysfunction, at the end of chemotherapy and at one year. For this, the investigators propose a randomized, controlled, clinical study which is blind both for the patient and the evaluating physician, comparing the difference of global longitudinal strain (an echocardiographic result of myocardial function) pre-chemotherapy minus end of chemotherapy and minus one year after, between the active group (aerobic program) and the control group (flexibility program).