Abstract
There is no clear established intervention guideline for the timing of rehabilitation intervention for patients undergoing cancer rehabilitation. A requirement for continuing chemotherapy is the ability to maintain a performance status （PS） score, which is an index of activity, between 0 and 2. At present, when a rehabilitation prescription is issued, various adverse events due to cancer that affect physical function are expected. In many cases, significant improvement in physical function cannot be expected. We believe that an early rehabilitation intervention that requires the subject to be more active than the current rehabilitation prescription may lead to PS maintenance. In this study, we divided the patients with advanced colorectal cancer who received chemotherapy into those in the pre-cachexia stage and those in the terminal stage （one month before death） at the time of diagnosis. We conducted a muscle mass survey of the psoas major muscle, which is related to the ability to perform activities of daily living such as walking. At the planning stage of the study, the psoas major muscle strength was expected to decrease toward the end of life. However, in reality, it decreased significantly from the time of diagnosis to the time of pre-cachexia. Even in the terminal stage of rehabilitation intervention, the number of cases of decreased psoas major muscle mass was lower than that of non-intervention cases. The present study suggests that rehabilitation intervention should be performed as soon as possible.
