Cancer Digestive Clinical Trial
Official title:
Effects of Combining a Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Intervention With Nutritional Support in Deconditioned Patients With Advanced Gastrointestinal Cancer - DIG'ELECTROSTIM-01
Dig' Electrostim-01 is phase II, single center (step 1) and multicentre (step 2), single-arm study to evaluate an 8-week NMES intervention combined with nutritional support in addition to usual patient care
Sarcopenia and cachexia are observed in more than 50% of patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. Both negatively affect patient survival and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) due to decreased tolerance to anticancer treatments and increased susceptibility to infections and other complications. Therefore, sarcopenia and cachexia represent a major clinical issue in this setting. A multimodal therapeutic approach to the sarcopenia and cachexia management is recommended, including nutritional support and exercise with personalized oncology care and family-centered education. Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) generates muscle contractions using portable devices connected to surface electrodes. NMES is safe, does not require the active cooperation of the patient and can be self-administered at home, thereby providing an acceptable physical therapy for patients with advanced cancer and an altered Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG PS) and/or a high-symptom burden, for whom attendance to hospital-based exercise training is difficult. In this study, we hypothesize that NMES is a safe and effective physical-therapy strategy to improve HRQoL and to reduce cancer-induced sarcopenia in patients with metastatic GI cancer and altered ECOG PS (ECOG PS of 2). ;