Comment: Article highlights the usefulness of exercise as part of the overall approach to cancer treatment and the challenges and differences as to how the Medicare system treats funding for exercise programs for cancer in comparison to other diseases.
Orthopaedic surgeon Jonathan Herald says he sees how much quicker patients recover with structured exercise rehabilitation.
“Exercise is emerging as one of the most powerful weapons in the disease-fighting arsenal to combat diseases like cancer,” Dr Herald said. A recent paper found women who engaged in regular exercise before their cancer diagnosis, and after treatment, were more than 40 per cent less likely to have their cancer come back or to die from the disease, than breast cancer patients who were inactive.
And leading cancer groups want exercise embedded as part of recovery.