Otávio Augusto Soares Machado, Jader Brito Ramos da Silva, Giovanna Athanásio Chaves Machado, Karen W. Wonders, Alice Aparecida Rodrigues Ferreira Francisco
The pandemic of COVID-19 has been plaguing the world. The social distance and uncertainty about the future, brought changes in our life habits. As a
consequence, the level of anxiety seems to have increased during this period. The level of anxiety experienced by cancer patients may differ from an individual
healthy. Therefore, the main goal of this research was verify if the cancer patients are spending the minutes for week of physical activity (PAm) recommended by
World Health Organization (WHO), and correlate it with the anxiety level of them. An online questionnaire was applied among cancer patients, being evaluated 57
women diagnosed with breast cancer (BC), aged between 20 and 75 years. The questionnaire was sent by text message and in spontaneous demand on social
networks. As main results we observed that before pandemic 87.7% were exercising regularly, while only 70.2% of them could maintain this habit. Regarding
the amount of minutes spent for week with physical activity, we found a mean of 90.5 vs 69.4 minutes before and during pandemic respectively. Considering the
minimum of WHO’s recomendation to PAm (150-300 of moderate or 75-150 of vigorous PA) we found that, comparing before and during pandemic, 24.5% vs
14% of BC patients reached the necessary amount of minutes. Finally, the level of anxiety was negatively correlated with amount PAm. Therefore, regarding BC
patients, we conclude that during the pandemic of COVID-19: 1. the engaging with PA was reduced by 17.5%; 2. the amount of PAm was reduced by 23.3%; 3.
the minimum of WHO’s recomendation to PAm was not reached, neither before nor during the pandemic; 4. increase the PAm seems to be useful, not medicated,
option against anxiety.
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Journal of Oncology Translational Research received 93 citations as per Google Scholar report
