Neoplasms

Skin and Connective Tissue Diseases

All Conditions

Symptoms and General Pathology

Breast Neoplasms

Neck Pain

Pain

Breast Diseases

Skin Diseases

Intervention will consist in a tailored exercise training following a previous published motor control protocol

Cervical motor control

Irene Cantarero-Villanueva, PhD

The aim of this study will be to determine the effectiveness of a physical therapy program which is based on cervical motor control exercises in long-term breast cancer survivors in order to improve their motor control and its possible impact on pain, mood state and quality of life.

Background: Breast cancer is becoming a common disease; however survival rates have improved throughout the last years. As a result, this also means that breast cancer survivors suffer side effects concerning the disease itself and treatments, as it is the case of certain kinds of pain. It is known that 80% of breast cancer survivors suffer this even 5 years after the completion of treatment and this impairment can be associated with a high tendency towards depression, cardiorespiratory deconditioning and even altered cervical control motor.

Aim: To determine the effectiveness of a physical therapy program based on cervical motor control training in order to improve motor control, mood state and quality of life.

Methods: Fifty-two long-term breast cancer survivors will be allocated to experimental group (n=26) or control group (n=26). The experimental group will receive a nine-week tailored exercise training focused on cervical motor control.

Discussion: There is a lack of knowledge about effective interventions when it comes to deal with altered motor control pattern of cervical area in long-term breast cancer survivors. Therefore, it is necessary to study the impact of this novel approach to improve quality of life in this population.

Cervical Motor Control in Long-term Breast Cancer Survivors

Effectiveness of a Physical Therapy Program for Improving Cervical Motor Control in Long-term Breast Cancer Survivors

It is self-administered questionnaire to test neck pain interference in daily activities. It contains 10 items

It is used to assess deficit of cervical motor pattern

Pressure pain thresholds (PPTs) will be assessed using an electronic algometer (Somedic AB, Farsta, Sweden)

It is used to assess subjective pain. It contains scores in the range of 0 to 10 (0 = 'no pain'; 10 = 'worst imaginable pain'). Participants will have to mark the level of pain that they feel in that moment for neck-shoulders areas

It is used to assess 4 moods: anxiety, anger-hostility, sadness-depression, and happiness. It contains 16 items

It is used to asses quality of life. It contains 30 items with both multi-item scales and single-item measures

It is a breast cancer module of EORTC QLQ-C30. This module contains 23 items assessing disease symptoms, side effects of treatment, body image, sexual functioning, and future perspective

It is used to calculate energy expenditure for leisure time physical activity

It is used to assess perceived patients' overall fitness, cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular fitness, speed-agility and flexibility

Universidad de Granada

Gland and Hormone Related Diseases

Musculoskeletal Diseases

Nervous System Diseases

Wounds and Injuries

Thyroid Neoplasms

Thyroid Diseases

Head and Neck Neoplasms

Shoulder Pain

Dyskinesias

Accessory Nerve Injuries

Arthralgia

Joint Diseases

Neurologic Manifestations

Accessory Nerve Diseases

Cranial Nerve Diseases

Cranial Nerve Injuries

Craniocerebral Trauma

Trauma, Nervous System

Participants in the control group will receive usual care ( standard physical therapy program)

Particiapnts in intervevention group will receive both usual care and myofascial release techniques

Sternocleidomastoid, Upper trapezius, Suboccipital region, Scalenes, Pectoral release, Scapular and hyoid mobilization techniques.

Duration: 6 weeks, 1 supervised session per week, and the session lasted 30 minutes.

Myofascial Release Technique

Therapeutic exercise: passive and active range of motion, strengthening and postural exercise in order to improve shoulder and cervical mobility, muscle flexibility, strength and endurance, postural control and movement patterns; 2) stretching of pectoral muscles and serratus anterior; 3) scar tissue massage to reduce scar tissue's stiffness.

Duration of the intervention: 6 weeks (1 supervised session and 2 individual per week). Each exercise will be done 1-3 sets and 5-10 repetitions.The session lasted 30 minutes.

Exercise diary will be utilized in order to follow the exercise program.

Exercise

Circular, Up and Down, Side to Side technique

Scar Tissue Massage

Ferhat SIMSEK, PhD(c)

Ali F OKYAR, Dr.

Ferhat SIMSEK, MSc

Ali Fethi OKYAR, PhD

As the head and neck cancer (HNC) survival rate has increased and therefore, the focus of post-treatments is to improve the quality of patients' life by decreasing the side effects. Treatment of HNC leads to acute and chronic soft tissue damage, and functional loss. However, patients with HNC need having rehabilitation throughout the post-treatment phase so as to improve functional outcomes because of the long term side effects. Chronic shoulder morbidity is one of the complications after surgery due to spinal accesory nerve injury. Moreover, pain, dysphonia, and musculoskeletal impairments are observed in the individuals after the treatments and the patients also have trouble swallowing problems, loss of taste, dry mouth, trismus, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue during and after therapy. Since there is limited research on the usage of manual therapy techniques in HNC patients, this study aims to investigate muscle changes after surgery and the effectiveness of physiotherapy on muscle material behaviour from a biomechanical perspective by using shear wave elastography. In this respect, the hypothesis is:

H0: Physical therapy interventions do not impact mechanical properties of muscle, pain, quality of life, cervical and shoulder functionality in HNC patients after neck dissection.

H1: Physical therapy interventions will improve mechanical properties of muscle, pain, quality of life, cervical and shoulder functionality in HNC patients after neck dissection.

As the HNC survival rate has increased and therefore, the focus of post-treatments is to improve the quality of patients' life by decreasing the side effects. Treatment of HNC leads to acute and chronic soft tissue damage, and functional loss. However, patients with HNC need having rehabilitation throughout the post-treatment phase so as to improve functional outcomes because of the long term side effects. Chronic shoulder morbidity (70% of patients) is one of the common complications after surgery, whereas 84% of survivors complain of their physical appearance due to the remaining head and neck lymphedema (HNL) after radiotherapy. Moreover, pain, dysphonia, and musculoskeletal impairments are observed in the individuals after the treatments and the patients also have trouble swallowing problems, loss of taste, dry mouth, trismus, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue during and after therapy.

Materials might behave in different stress-strain relationships, and it is represented by a stress-strain curve, a basic descriptor of material.Thanks to the stress-strain diagram, differences between materials can be determined such as stiffness, hardness and toughness. Several concepts describe material properties in addition to a stress-strain diagram. For instance, a homogeneous material is one whose properties are not affected by location within the material, anisotropic material is one whose properties are free of direction, and incompressible material retains its volume during deformation. However, the behaviour of soft tissue is anisotropic due to its fibre contents, its constitutive behaviour is nonlinear and incompressible, and it is heterogeneous material owing to its composition, but it can be homogenized under macroscopic analysis. Due to the complexity of soft tissue, its mechanical behaviour is highly affected by density, collagen and elastin's structural arrangement, topographical site, function, and hydrated matrix of proteoglycans. In other words, mechanical properties of soft tissues are related to shape, genetics, age , physical and chemical environmental conditions like strain rate, osmotic pressure and Ph, temperature, which affects skeletal muscle's contractile properties.

It is known that deformable-body changes shape when it is exposed to an external force. In general, several constitutive relations govern the stress and strain relations, for example, plasticity, viscoelasticity, linear elastic, hyperelasticity so on. It is common to use hyperelastic models (i.e. time-independent) so as to determine the association of the stress-strain of soft tissue, even though the biological soft tissues mechanical behaviour is time-dependent . These models are based on the strain energy density which is the energy stored by a system undergoing deformation.

Disuse and immobilization influence muscle fibres harmfully including decreased muscle strength and neural activation of muscle fibre, muscle atrophy, loss of force production and endurance due to decrease in cross-sectional area (CSA). Jones et al., found that immobilization leads to muscle atrophy by decreasing protein synthesis and increasing protein impairment and loss of muscle mass after two weeks of immobilization. Muscle atrophy can exist in the following injury, during an illness such as cancer, sepsis and long term hospitalization. Shortening of myosin and actin filaments alters mechanical properties of muscle because of length-dependent force production. Moreover, the energy production of skeletal muscles is affected during the disuse period by decreasing fat oxidation and enhancing glycolysis, which is a source of muscle energy. Furthermore, muscle composition is impacted due to disuse and inactivity, mainly in type 1 fibre, which maintains postural control. Since radiotherapy and surgery impact negatively on muscle. For instance, after neck dissection, trapezius muscle atrophy seems to be due to SAN injury. It is found that atrophied trapezius muscle's stiffness was significantly lower because of physiological and intrinsic alterations associated with fatty infiltration and atrophy of muscle It is known that physical training affects muscle architecture, such as fibre type distribution, fascicle length, pennation angle and CSA, and force production. Since physical activity contributes to improving the CSA of skeletal muscle, muscle strength and bulk are increased. Moreover, exercise contributes to increased neural activity, contractile tissue and differentiating fibre type. Muscle mechanical properties may change.

Myofascial techniques are one of the manual therapy interventions which focus on treating fascia. It comprises various techniques and interventions such as acupuncture, dry needling, wet needling with pharmaceuticals, and traditional technical approaches such as strain-counter strain, muscle energy technique, positional release, ischemic compression and myofascial release (MFRT). The effectiveness of MFRT has been shown in various trials in different fields. For instance, MFRTs improve outcomes in individuals having shoulder pain, ankle joint restriction, fibromyalgia and lateral epicondylitis. On the other hand, in the cancer field, since MFRTs perform in addition to a standard rehabilitation program, the effect mechanism of MFRT is unclear in cancer . However, it impacts positively on pain, emotions and cancer-related fatigue.

As stated in the surgery part, inflammatory response leads to fibrosis due to increasing edema and healing proteins. This chronic tension that results in abuse, disuse, overuse and anxiety could cause fascial thickening. Within this regard, fascial work is one of the most important parts for treating fibrosis.

As mentioned before, patients with head and neck cancer suffer from the side effects of the treatment. One of the harmful effects of the treatments mostly causes neck and shoulder muscle atrophy, fibrosis and reduction in functionality level. Therefore, it is important to determine changes in mechanical properties of muscles so as to understand effectiveness of physical therapy interventions in HNC patients. To our knowledge, this study will be the first study to directly investigate how neck and shoulder muscles adapt to physical therapy interventions in the scope of material behaviour in HNC patients after neck dissection.

This study will be conducted in Yeditepe University Research Hospital/ Ear Nose and Throat Department.

A randomized single blind controlled clinical trial

Investigation of Effects of Physiotherapy Interventions on Mechanical Properties of Muscle in Head and Neck Cancer

Investigation of Effects of Physioherapy Interventions on Mechanical Properties of Muscle in Head and Neck Cancer

There is not a plan to make IPD available.

It will be measured by Shear Wave Elastography in relax and contracted state of muscle Muscles: M. Upper Trapezius, M. Sternocleidomastoid, M. Masseter /Bilateral

It will be measured by Shear Wave Elastography Muscles: M. Upper Trapezius, M. Sternocleidomastoid, M. Masseter /Bilateral

The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy system of Quality of Life- Head and Neck (FACT H\&N Turkish Version)

Study title	NCT ID	Conditions	Interventions	Eligibility	Organization	Link
Cervical Motor Control in Long-term Breast Cancer Survivors	NCT02825810	Breast Neoplasm...	Cervical motor ...	18 Years - 75 Years	Universidad de Granada
Investigation of Effects of Physiotherapy Interventions on Mechanical Properties of Muscle in Head and Neck Cancer	NCT05399953	Head and Neck C... Spinal Accessor... Thyroid Cancer Scapular Dyskin... Cervical Pain Shoulder Pain	Myofascial Rele... Exercise Scar Tissue Mas...	18 Years -	Yeditepe University

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