Prehabilitation program improves physical and psychological outcomes in leukemia patients before chemotherapy

This single-blind, parallel-group randomized controlled trial enrolled 86 newly diagnosed leukemia patients at a tertiary hospital in China. Participants were assigned to either a 12-week trifold prehabilitation program (integrating exercise, nutritional support, and psychological care) prior to induction chemotherapy or to usual care. The primary outcomes were feasibility metrics, with secondary outcomes assessing physical, nutritional, and psychological status at baseline, pre-chemotherapy, and 1 and 3 months post-chemotherapy.

The study reported a recruitment rate of 60.14% and an attrition rate of 20.93%. Compared to usual care, the prehabilitation group showed significantly greater improvements in 6-minute walk distance from pre-chemotherapy to 3 months post-chemotherapy (p < 0.05). Cancer-related fatigue also showed significantly greater improvement over the same period (p < 0.05). Nutritional status improved at 3 months post-chemotherapy (p = 0.033). Anxiety and depression scores were consistently lower across all follow-up points in the intervention group (p < 0.01). Exercise self-efficacy showed significant improvements at 1 and 3 months post-chemotherapy.

No serious adverse events occurred, though detailed adverse event and tolerability data were not reported. Key limitations include the single-center design, small sample size, and lack of reported effect sizes or absolute numbers for most outcomes. Funding sources and conflicts of interest were not reported.

For practice, this RCT provides preliminary evidence that a structured prehabilitation program is safe and feasible for leukemia patients and may offer benefits across multiple domains. However, the generalizability is limited by the single-center Chinese setting and small sample. The findings support further investigation of prehabilitation in this population but do not yet justify widespread implementation outside of a research context.