Effectiveness of wearable activity tracker to reinforce leisure time physical activity among breast cancer patients: a randomized controlled trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Physical activity during and after treatment has been identified as a potential strategy to assist women throughout their treatment, positively influence the recovery and fatigue. OBJECTIVE This randomized controlled trial aimed to evaluate whether wearable activity tracker (WAT) in addition to counseling would reinforce leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) among patients with breast cancer in comparison with counseling only. METHODS This randomized controlled trial was conducted from May 2015 to December 2017 at the Samsung Comprehensive Cancer Center in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 152 breast cancer patients who were age of 19-65 years, stage I-III breast cancer, and plan to undergo radiation therapy (RT) after surgery. The counseling with WAT application group (n=76) underwent physical activity (PA) self-monitoring using a Fitbit Charge with weekly counseling, and the counseling only group (n=76) received telephone counseling once a week during RT. The primary outcome was LTPA after RT; LTPA was evaluated using the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire before, immediately after, and 3 and 6 months after RT. For the analysis of the primary outcome, we calculated differences between the baseline and follow-up LTPAs and divided them by the absolute value at baseline to determine the relative change. In the subgroup analysis, changes of LTPA and average daily step counts were also compared using t-test and mixed model. RESULTS The mean patient age was 47.04 years, and all baseline characteristics were similar between the groups. The counseling with WAT application group had increased relative change in LTPAs (102.8) compared with the counseling only group (57.8 minute/week) immediately after RT compared with those at baseline and was more likely to maintain long-term LTPAs (6 months after counseling). In the subgroup analysis patients who did not perform regular PAs before cancer diagnosis had significantly increased step counts (steps/day) compared with those who did. CONCLUSIONS This study shows the feasibility of WAT application with counseling to reinforce PA among patients with breast cancer. This intervention was more effective among the patients who did not perform regular PAs before cancer diagnosis CLINICALTRIAL KCT0001474: https://cris.nih.go.kr/cris/search/search_result_st01.jsp?seq=5858