Doctor: “You have prostate cancer.”
Patient: “Doctor, that’s awful. What can I do to help it grow slower and feel better?”
Doctor: “Eat right and exercise.”
Patients: “How much exercise should I do?”
Doctor: “I don’t know.”
While the above is a fictitious discussion between doctor and patient, my guess is that similar discussions occur every day. When diagnosed with cancer, patients want to improve their lifestyle and clamor for any information their provider can give them. Unfortunately, most providers don’t know what advice to give. Even if the provider is knowledgeable and interested, discerning the literature and coming up with an answer to a straightforward question such as “how much exercise” is not an easy task. Into this void, steps the systematic review and meta-analysis by Lopez and colleagues.