Football as rehabilitation for cancer patients

The number of individuals living with and beyond cancer is growing worldwide due to improvements in diagnosis and treatment. Late effects of treatment that negatively impact patients’ health and quality of life may be counteracted by physical exercise, but only a minority of cancer survivors follow public guidelines for physical activity levels. This is also the case for men with prostate cancer, who are prone to numerous side effects of castration-based treatment but mostly do not take up exercise spontaneously after the point of diagnosis. Given this background, the FC Prostate RCT (n=57) was initiated in 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the results of the study indicate that football is an intense, intermittent training modality that elicits high heart-rate frequencies and improves muscle mass and strength after 12 weeks, and bone mineral density of the hip and physical function after 32 weeks. The relatively small sample and injuries sustained during football training highlighted the need for larger, pragmatic studies. In 2015, a community-based study (n=214) was initiated nationwide in Denmark in close collaboration between universities, hospitals and local football clubs, and the results of this trial will provide highly valuable data to inform clinicians and policymakers concerning the relevance and safety of football training in the rehabilitation of prostate cancer patients.