TOPLINE: 

The mind-body therapy qigong shows superior efficacy for cancer-related pain management, outperforming usual care and massage with the highest ranking of 86.5%. Tai chi demonstrates particular effectiveness for breast cancer patients, achieving an 89.6% ranking in this subgroup.

METHODOLOGY:

• Cancer-related pain affects up to 55% of patients during treatment, with 39.3% continuing to experience pain after treatment completion. Current international guidelines encourage cancer patients to engage in physical activity, and they recommend mind-body therapies as a treatment method for cancer-related pain.
• Researchers conducted a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials comparing different mind-body therapies for improving pain in adults living with cancer.
• Analysis included 36 studies with 2387 participants, evaluated using the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool within a frequentist framework.
• Eight electronic databases were searched for eligible studies, including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, ClinicalTrials.gov, SPORTDiscus, Embase, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure.
• Surface under the cumulative ranking curve values were calculated to establish hierarchical rankings of different mind-body therapy interventions.

TAKEAWAY:

• Qigong demonstrated significantly greater effects than usual care (standardized mean difference [SMD], −0.85; 95% CI, −1.46 to −0.24), waitlist (SMD, −0.93; 95% CI, −1.77 to −0.08), and massage (SMD, −1.71; 95% CI, −3.20 to −0.23), ranking first with a surface under the cumulative ranking value of 86.5%.
• Conventional exercise (75.2%), tai chi (74.9%), and Pilates (64.6%) showed promising results, while massage ranked lowest (7.2%).
• In a breast cancer subgroup analysis, tai chi (89.6%), conventional exercise (68.4%), and Pilates (68.3%) emerged as the top three interventions.
• During cancer treatment, qigong showed highest efficacy (89.6%), while tai chi was most effective post-treatment (77.2%).

IN PRACTICE:

"This network meta-analysis indicates that Qigong and Tai Chi are among the most effective mind-body therapies for managing cancer-related pain and may serve as complementary adjuvant treatments for patients with cancer," wrote the authors of the study.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Xiuyun He and Guangyuan Liang, Postgraduate Research Institute, Guangzhou Sport University in Guangzhou, China. It was published online in Translational Exercise Biomedicine.

LIMITATIONS:

The absence of a standardized list of mind-body therapies resulted in an ad hoc compilation for the network meta-analysis. Distribution of studies among the six mind-body therapies was uneven, with 20 articles focusing solely on yoga. Most studies centered on breast cancer, potentially limiting generalizability to other cancer types. Additionally, variations in intervention length, frequency, and duration across included studies may have influenced treatment effects.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was supported by the program of Guangdong Provincial Clinical Research Center for Rehabilitation Medicine (2023B110003), the Research Foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine Bureau of Guangdong Province (20231,067), and the Guangdong Hopson-Pearl River Education Development Foundation (No. H20190116202012724).

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.