Professor John Saxton John.Saxton@hull.ac.uk
Professor in Clinical Exercise Physiology and Head of the School of Sport, Exercise & Rehabilitation Sciences
The experiences and perceptions of female breast cancer patients regarding weight management during and after treatment for oestrogen-receptor positive disease: a qualitative study
Saxton, JM; Pickering, K; Wane, S; Crank, H; Anderson, AS; Cain, H; Cohen, J; Copeland, RJ; Gray, J; Hargreaves, J; McNally, RJQ; Wilson, C
Authors
K Pickering
S Wane
H Crank
AS Anderson
H Cain
Professor Judith Cohen J.Cohen@hull.ac.uk
Director, Hull Health Trials Unit
RJ Copeland
J Gray
J Hargreaves
RJQ McNally
C Wilson
Abstract
Background: Weight gain is commonly observed during and after breast cancer treatment and is associated with poorer survival outcomes, notably in women with oestrogen-receptor positive disease. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the experiences and perceptions of oestrogen-receptor positive (ER +) female breast cancer patients (BCPs) regarding weight management behaviours during and after treatment. Secondly, to gain insight into the experiences of healthcare professionals (HCPs) regarding the provision of weight management advice to patients undergoing treatment. Methods: Four focus groups involving 16 BCPs having a median (range) age of 51 (35–70 y) and three focus groups involving 21 HCPs aged 46 (29–62) were held at a university campus, local cancer support centre or clinical site. Data were analysed using Framework analysis. Results: Four overarching themes (and 10 subthemes) were identified: (1) Treatment; (2) Support for lifestyle behaviour change; (3) Information availability for BCPs; (4) Knowledge of current evidence amongst HCPs. The physical and psychological consequences of treatment influenced motivation for weight management amongst BCPs. Social support for health promoting behaviours was viewed as important but was conflicting, requiring context-specific considerations. BCPs said they would have welcomed access to credible information (guided by HCPs) about the potential detrimental health effects of excess body weight and weight gain, together with advice on weight management via healthy eating and physical activity. HCPs felt that they had insufficient knowledge of public health dietary and physical activity recommendations or evidence-based interventions to confidently offer such advice. HCPs expressed concern that raising weight management issues would exacerbate distress or invoke feelings of guilt amongst BCPs, and cited time pressures on patient consultations as additional barriers to providing weight management support. Conclusion: The study yielded novel insights into factors influencing weight management behaviours amongst overweight ER + BCPs. The results suggest that evidence-based information and support, which addresses key physical and psychological challenges to physical activity and dietary behaviours, offers the best route to sustainable weight management in this population.
Citation
Saxton, J., Pickering, K., Wane, S., Crank, H., Anderson, A., Cain, H., Cohen, J., Copeland, R., Gray, J., Hargreaves, J., McNally, R., & Wilson, C. (2022). The experiences and perceptions of female breast cancer patients regarding weight management during and after treatment for oestrogen-receptor positive disease: a qualitative study. BMC Cancer, 22(1), Article 1189. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-022-10238-7
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 26, 2022 |
Online Publication Date | Nov 18, 2022 |
Publication Date | Dec 1, 2022 |
Deposit Date | Jan 12, 2023 |
Publicly Available Date | Jan 13, 2023 |
Journal | BMC Cancer |
Print ISSN | 1471-2407 |
Electronic ISSN | 1471-2407 |
Publisher | BioMed Central |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 22 |
Issue | 1 |
Article Number | 1189 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-022-10238-7 |
Keywords | Breast cancer; Hormone-positive; Weight management; Barriers and facilitators |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4175195 |
Files
Published article
(1.2 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the
original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or
other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
You might also like
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Hull
Administrator e-mail: repository@hull.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search