Dr. Nair on Using Yoga to Improve Quality of Life in Patients Undergoing Breast Cancer Treatments

Nita Nair, MBBS, DNB, MCh, professor of surgical oncology, Tata Memorial Centre, discusses research evaluating the role of yoga as a way to improve the quality of life of patients undergoing breast cancer treatments.

Breast cancer survival has changed significantly over the years, owing in part to advances in systemic therapy, Nair begins. However, all these therapies may also lead to toxicities, Nair says, and that’s where quality of life becomes a vital consideration. As such, oncologists have begun to place more emphasis on finding effective treatments that also lead to improved quality of life, Nair explains. That is where incorporating quality of life end points into a study can be useful.

Apart from the therapy itself, yoga may complement a patient’s quality of life by potentially reducing the number of adverse effects they experience. Yoga looks at mastering the mind over body, giving the patient a certain amount of discipline, which can in turn lead to better rates of treatment completion, Nair emphasizes.

The idea of utilizing yoga in this space came from Lorenzo G. Cohan, MD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. There are stress-related outcomes that affect the success of treatment, but yoga works towards providing a better response to those stressors, Nair continues. Therefore, investigators aimed to complete a study that was designed to evaluate long-term survival outcomes with the use yoga as a complementary therapy for patients who are receiving treatment for breast cancer, Nair says. As such, investigators designed a study with survival as the primary end point and quality of life as a secondary end point. Investigators aimed to determine if there was an improvement in quality of life, whether there would also be an improvement in survival with this low-cost, low-risk technique, Nair concludes.