Harms of exercise training in patients with cancer undergoing systemic treatment: a protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis of published and unpublished controlled trials

Exercise is recommended for people with cancer. The aim of this study will be to evaluate the harms of exercise in patients with cancer undergoing systemic treatment. This systematic review and meta-analysis will include published and unpublished controlled trials comparing exercise interventions versus controls in adults with cancer scheduled to undergo systemic treatment. The primary outcomes will be adverse events, health-care utilization, and treatment tolerability and response. Eleven electronic databases and trial registries will be systematically searched with no date or language restrictions. The risk of bias will be judged using RoB2 and ROBINS-I, and the certainty of evidence for primary outcomes will be assessed using GRADE. Data will be statistically synthesised using pre-specified random-effect meta-analyses.