Supervised Exercise for Head and Neck Cancer Patients Initiated Previously or After Treatment: the SEHNeCa Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives:

• To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of an innovative supervised exercise program for patients with head and neck cancer (SEHNeCa) to ameliorate loss of lean body mass, functional capacity and quality of life during one year, compared to a reference group receiving a physical activity prescription to be performed autonomously.
• To identify the optimal timing for applying the supervised exercise program: in a Prehabilitation period, at least 2 weeks before starting the conventional chemoradiotherapy treatment and concomitant with it, or during a Rehabilitation period, starting 12 weeks after the first radiotherapy session, once standard treatment has finished. Design: a multicenter, randomized clinical trial, where patients will be randomized to 3 groups: one control group and 2 experimental with different timing of exercise intervention. Population: 120 patients diagnosed with histological locally advanced stage III-IVa-b with squamous cell carcinomas of the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity, salivary or in neck lymph nodes from an unknown primary tumour treated with curative intent undergoing radiotherapy with or without concomitant chemotherapy.

SEHNeCa program: is a 12-week exercise program supervised by specially trained instructors combining moderate to high intensity aerobic and strength exercises (three 1 hour sessions a week). Outcome measurements: main outcome variable: change in body mass index at 6 months (multy-frecuenciy imoediance). Secondary variables at basal, 7, 12, 25, and 52 weeks after the beginning of radiotherapy include quality of life (general SF-36 and cancer specific quality of life -European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer QLQ-C-30-),functional capacity (6 min walking test), patient reported outcomes and treatment maximum adverse events. Analyses: Differences between treatment groups in changes in outcome variables will be analyzed on an intention to treat basis. We will use linear mixed models for longitudinal analysis of repeated measurements of continuous outcomes (SAS PROC MIXED) and generalized logistic mixed models for dichotomous (SAAS PROC GLIMMIX), considering intercept and time courses as random effects and testing the significance of the interaction of time slopes by treatment group.