Photo by Bill Branson
A yoga program for children with cancer can be carried out during cancer treatment and has quality of life (QOL) benefits for the children as well as their caregivers, according to research published in Rehabilitation Oncology.
However, the program was not feasible for all patients. More than half of those initially enrolled could not complete the study due to treatment toxicity or scheduling conflicts.
Andrea Orsey, MD, of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, and her colleagues conducted this research to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a yoga intervention for children with cancer and their families.
The team began by conducting a survey of 20 children and adolescents with cancer and their parents/guardians.
Survey respondents expressed interest in a yoga program. But they also perceived several barriers to such a program, including concerns about side effects, pain/discomfort, and physical limitations.
With these barriers in mind, Dr Orsey and her colleagues developed a yoga intervention for pediatric cancer patients, delivered by certified yoga instructors.
The program was designed to be performed in a variety of settings and tailored to the children’s physical condition or mobility issues.
A pilot evaluation included 10 children with cancer and their caregivers. Twenty-two patient/caregiver pairs were actually enrolled, but 6 pairs withdrew because of treatment toxicity, and 6 had the study window lapse due to scheduling conflicts.
Although limited by its small size, the study suggested that yoga improved health-related QOL for both caregivers and children.
The children had significant improvements in both social and emotional QOL. They had an overall improvement in fatigue, but this was not statistically significant.
Caregivers had a significant improvement in mental health but not physical health or caregiver burden.
Both caregivers and children said they were satisfied with the yoga program and would recommend it to others.
Dr Orsey and her colleagues hope this pilot study will help guide future efforts to provide yoga to children with cancer and their families.
The researchers noted that a key issue will be coordinating yoga sessions with the medical demands of chemotherapy.
