Heart attacks = Cardiac Rehab! Why Doesn’t Cancer = Cancer Rehab?

Have you suffered a heart attack? Know someone who has? According to the CDC, each year over 800,000 people have what doctors call a myocardial infarction and the rest of us call a heart attack. About 681,000 die of heart disease. If people survive, cardiologists almost always prescribe personalized cardiac rehabilitation within weeks of the event. Insurance pays! Cancer kills roughly 613,000 annually. Oncologists rarely prescribe personalized cancer rehabilitation. Insurance does not pay! If cardiac rehab helps heart patients, why wouldn’t cancer rehab help cancer patients?

What Happens During Cardiac Rehab?

Not that long ago, a heart attack meant almost certain death and/or disability. Now, though, cardiologists can open clogged coronary arteries soon after a patient arrives in the emergency department. As soon as the infarct is located, the interventional cardiologist can inflate a tiny balloon to open the artery. The team inserts a stent to keep blood flowing and minimize damage to heart tissue.

Cardiac rehab often starts while the patient is still in the hospital. It is not unusual to have the patient begin supervised walking in the hospital hallway during the early recovery phase of treatment.

Patients are almost always referred to a cardiac rehab program soon after returning home. In such a program, the patient is instructed on appropriate exercise and supervised while they complete it over three to six months after the event. The monitoring covers heart rate and blood pressure. It may also include cardiac imaging and electrocardiograms to check on how the heart is responding to the challenge of targeted physical activity.

Exercises usually begin slowly at first so as not to overwhelm the cardiovascular system. They may include walking, working out on an elliptical trainer or riding a stationary bike. Resistance training to build strength may be part of the regimen as well.

Most insurance plans, including Medicare and Medicaid, cover cardiac rehab. The data suggest that exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation can reduce the likelihood of another heart attack and rehospitalization. It can also produce a marked improvement in health-related quality of life (International Journal of Surgery, March 1, 2025).

Cancer Rehab Is Virtually Nonexistent:

Cancer treatment can be long and arduous. It often involves surgery, radiation therapy and/or chemotherapy. The latest advances in immunotherapy have been quite impressive. But they too can take a toll on the body. Rarely do oncologists prescribe exercise in the hospital. It would be unusual to see cancer patients walking the hallways with an assistant the way heart attack patients do.

During cancer treatment, it would be unusual for a medical center to recommend an exercise program. The assumption is usually made that patients will be exhausted from chemo or radiation. Oncologists are focused on things like tumor shrinkage. They measure success with scans and blood tests.

Does Cancer Rehab Make sense?

Given the success of exercise for heart patients, one might imagine that other serious health conditions might also benefit from similar rehabilitation initiatives. In particular, evidence shows that cancer patients do better if they can participate in a cancer rehab program.

Colon Cancer Rehab:

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (July 3, 2025) confirms the value of exercise against colon cancer recurrence.  The investigators recruited nearly 900 patients who underwent surgery and chemotherapy. Half received health education while the other half participated in a three-year structured exercise program. The volunteers were followed for a median of about 8 years.

The authors conclude:

“Exercise significantly reduced the relative risk of disease recurrence, new primary cancer, or death by 28%. The disease-free survival curves began to separate at about 1 year and continued to separate over the 10-year follow-up, with an absolute between-group difference of 6.4 percentage points at 5 years. Moreover, exercise reduced the relative risk of death by 37%.”

Breast and Prostate Cancer Rehab:

Other research suggests that breast cancer survivors may also benefit from muscle-strengthening exercise (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Sept. 10, 2024).

People with prostate, lung and blood cancers also appear to do better when they participate in structured physical activity (Critical Reviews in Oncology/Hematology, March 2025).

Barrers to Cancer Rehab?

Despite all the evidence supporting the value of exercise in the fight against cancer recurrence and premature death, there are a few barriers. For one thing, doctors don’t often prescribe exercise for cancer patients. Unlike their cardiology colleagues, they have not yet embraced the advantages of exercise.

There is another roadblock. Although insurance covers cardiac rehab, it rarely pays for cancer rehab.

We are all for pharmaceutical breakthroughs. New treatments have improved outcomes for many cancer patients, but such advances are often extremely expensive. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars for new cancer therapies. Exercise could represent a much lower-cost and effective approach to extend life and improve quality.

What Do You Think About Cancer Rehab?

Have you had cancer? Do you know someone who has had cancer? Has exercise been part of the rehabilitation program? Has any health professional recommended a personalized exercise program during or after treatment? What about a group exercise program? We find that when people exercise together they are more likely to participate on a regular basis. They also get support from other people in the group!

Has insurance paid for such supervised cancer rehab? We would love to get answers to these questions, so please add your thoughts in the comment section below.

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