Effect of Circuit Weight Training on Functional Capacity and Quality of Life in Breast Cancer Patients

Breast Cancer is the most common cancer among women in Egypt causing 22 percent of all cancer-related female deaths. It is the most commonly diagnosed cancer, accounting for nearly a quarter of all cancer cases globally.

With improvements in early detection, surgery, and adjuvant therapy for breast cancer, long-term survival and cure are becoming possible. Despite providing longer survival with early diagnosis of breast cancer, the treatment leaves sequelae with adverse effects such as influence on functional capacity, fatigue, depression, neuropathic lymphoedema, low immunity, and loss of flexibility. All of these effects end up affecting the quality of life (QoL), Imbalance, gait dysfunction, and falls may have particularly severe consequences in breast cancer survivors due to comorbidities increasing the risk of fall-related injury, secondary decline in physical activity, and subsequent functional decline.

Given the profound effects that imbalance, gait dysfunction, and falls have on functional independence, QOL, and long-term health and survivorship, the treatment or prevention of these symptoms is an essential component of cancer rehabilitation for all survivors.

Furthermore, the need for this study is developed from the lack of quantitative knowledge and information in the published studies about the effect of Circuit Weight Training (CWT) on functional capacity and quality of life in breast cancer patients.