LAUSR

For women with ovarian cancer, 70% are diagnosed in an advanced stage of disease and carry a poor prognosis with a 5-year survival rate of 41% in stage III and 23% in stage IV (NORDCAN, 2019). The majority are offered combination chemotherapy and may face impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL) due to the burden of symptoms and multiple chemotherapy-induced side effects such as fatigue, gastrointestinal disorders, pain, nausea/vomiting, sexual discomfort and peripheral neuropathy (Lockwood-Rayermann, 2006; Mishra et al., 2012). Supportive efforts to ameliorate the negative effects on HRQoL are therefore needed. Non-pharmacological interventions such as nurse-led telephone interventions, pain-reducing or psycho-educational programmes to address reductions in HRQoL have shown no convincing effect in women with ovarian cancer (Cook et al., 2015; Davis & Carpenter, 2015; Kalter et al., 2018). Likewise and despite the increased attention given to exercise oncology (McTiernan et al., 2019), only a few small-scaled intervention studies (n = 17–30), are available examining HRQoL in women with ovarian cancer undergoing chemotherapy, which is why the results must be applied with caution (Mizrahi et al., 2015; Moonsammy et al., 2013; Newton et al., 2011; von Gruenigen et al., 2011). A Danish randomised controlled trial called Body & Cancer was conducted in Denmark involving a supervised, hospital-based, high-to-low intensity exercise intervention with physical, psychological and social components that showed significant effects on fatigue and improved physical function in patients (n = 269) with 21 different cancer diagnoses (Adamsen et al., 2009). The intervention has been implemented nationwide as a standard 6-week rehabilitation programme for Danish cancer patients. Based on data from the Body & Cancer programme, the primary aim of the present study was to investigate the potential benefits of the multimodal exercise programme on HRQoL in women with ovarian cancer undergoing chemotherapy, which is an underreported subpopulation in exercise literature.