Yoga
Yoga, originating in a thousand year old Indian tradition, is becoming more and more popular. There are hundreds of different styles of yoga, but in the Western world, yoga training mostly consists of three main elements: physical postures, breathing exercises and meditation. An increasing number of cancer patients use yoga as an additional way to improve their well-being. However, a systematic evaluation about the effects of yoga in the management of haematological malignancies is still missing.
Objectives
We reviewed the evidence about the effects of yoga on people with haematological malignancies. We also considered overall survival, distress, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep quality and adverse events as important outcomes. We compared people suffering from haematological malignancies treated with yoga and standard cancer care with those treated with standard cancer care only.
Yoga in additiontostandard care for patients withhaematological malignancies (Review) Copyright © 2014The CochraneCollaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Findings
We included a single trial with 39 participants in the review (20 in the yoga group and 19 in the control group). The trial looked at a seven-week Tibetan Yoga program in a group of people with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The average age was 51 years. The trial involved patients who were currently receiving anti-cancer therapy as well as patients who were not receiving active therapy. The trial found insufficient data to make a judgement about the efficacy of yoga on distress, fatigue, depression and anxiety compared with patients not practicing yoga. Yoga can improve the patients’ quality of sleep. The trial gave no information about health-related quality of life, overall survival or adverse events.
On the basis of the GRADE criteria, we judged the overall quality of evidence for yoga concerning the outcomes distress, fatigue, anxiety, depression and quality of sleep as ’very low’.
Conclusion
There are not enough data to say how effective yoga is in the management of haematological malignancies. Therefore, the role of yoga for haematological malignancies remains unclear. Further large, high-quality randomised controlled trials are needed.
The evidence is up-to-date as of 4 February 2014.