Shoulder amplitude movement does not influence postoperative wound complications after breast cancer surgery: a randomized clinical trial.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study is to evaluate the influence of shoulder exercises with restricted amplitude movement (RAM) or free amplitude movement (FAM) performed from the first postoperative day (1st POD) on the incidence of surgical wound complications (SWC) in breast cancer.

METHODS

This study comprises a randomized clinical trial with an intention-to-treat analysis including 465 women aged 18 to 79, who underwent curative surgery for breast cancer. Participants were submitted to perform free amplitude movement (FAM) or restricted amplitude movement (RAM) shoulder exercises, until the 30th postoperative day. The outcome measures were the SWC: seroma, dehiscence, necrosis, infection, hematoma and bruise.

RESULTS

461 participants completed the follow-up. Thirty days after surgery, 63.8% of the women presented some surgical wound complication, with necrosis (39.3%) and seroma (30.8%) as the most frequent. No statistically significant differences in SWC according to postoperative amplitude shoulder exercise (FAM vs RAM), even after a stratified analysis by type of surgery (segmentectomy vs mastectomy) or axillary approach (axillary lymphadenectomy versus sentinel lymph node biopsy) were observed.

CONCLUSION

FAM exercises do not increase the incidence of postoperative wound complications compared to RAM exercises.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT03796845.