Adapted physical activity for breast cancer patients: shared considerations with two Olympic and world Italian sports champions

Breast cancer is a growing global public health concern. Thanks to the recent treat-ments progress, the survival rate of BC patients has significantly improved (88% of 5-year survival rate) and the number of cancer survivors has al-so increased. Notwithstanding these brilliant re-sults, many BC patients have long-term side ef-fects as pain, oedema, limited mobility, cancer related fatigue, etc. as a consequence of surgi-cal, radiotherapy and medical treatments. For ex-ample, posture appears to be frequently altered after mastectomy, due to the impairment of the mobility of the arm caused by surgical scars. All these aspects negatively affect the health-related Quality of Life (QoL) of BC patients. Recent sev-eral randomized clinical trials have shown ben-efits of regular and appropriate physical activity (PA) during and after BC treatment, particularly in terms of benefits for health, reducing fatigue, im-proving strength levels, QoL and physical func-tion. In this context, two types of sports have demonstrated their affinity and efficacy as treat-ment support during and after treatments for BC patients: fencing and rowing. Here we report con-siderations shared with two sport champions: the fencing Olympic gold medal Daniele Garozzo and the rowing World Champion Giovanni Ficarra, with the aim to find the adapted PA for BC patients.