Yoga May Cut Complications With Radiation for Head, Neck Cancer
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 1, 2023 -- Participating in yoga may cut negative treatment-related complications in patients with head and neck cancer undergoing radiation, according to a study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Quality Care Symposium, held from Oct. 27 to 28 in Boston.
Kathrin Milbury, Ph.D., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues randomly assigned patients to yoga with their caregiver (34 patients), patient-only yoga (33 patients), or usual care (33 patients). The yoga intervention included 15 sessions, either in-person or via videoconference, with sessions happening in parallel with the patient’s radiotherapy schedule. Data on treatment-related complications were extracted from medical records.
The researchers found that yoga session attendance was high in both groups, with 88 percent of participants attending at least 10 sessions (13.1 sessions in the patient-caregiver group and 13.3 sessions in the patient-only group). For patient-reported physical function and nutrition intake, yoga was associated with a significant effect favoring the patient-caregiver group. Compared to the usual-care group, patients in both yoga groups had significantly fewer feeding tubes placed. There was a marginally significant effect for yoga reducing emergency department visits, but no significant effect for hospital admission.
"I believe the lack of significant group difference between the patient-only yoga and patient-caregiver yoga groups is related to the high session attendance in both yoga groups," Milbury said in a statement. "One of benefits of yoga is the immediate stress relief, and as such our participants experience the benefit early on in the program."
Financial ties to Agenus and PharmaCann were disclosed; one researcher is the author of The Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care.
Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.
© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Posted November 2023
Read this next
American Association for Cancer Research, April 5-10
The annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research was held this year from April 5 to 10 in San Diego, drawing approximately 19,000 participants from around the...
Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocyte Abundance Prognostic in Early-Stage TNBC
THURSDAY, April 18, 2024 -- For patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) who undergo surgery without chemotherapy, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL)...
Microwave Ablation Feasible for T1N0M0 Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma
FRIDAY, April 12, 2024 -- For patients with multifocal papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), the rates of progression-free survival (PFS) do not differ between microwave ablation...
More news resources
- FDA Medwatch Drug Alerts
- Daily MedNews
- News for Health Professionals
- New Drug Approvals
- New Drug Applications
- Drug Shortages
- Clinical Trial Results
- Generic Drug Approvals
Subscribe to our newsletter
Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.