Short-term inpatient-based high-intensive pulmonary rehabilitation for lung cancer patients: is it feasible and effective?

Malignant tumors have been the most health-threatening and death-causing disease to humans with the morbidity rate of lung cancer ranking first among all tumors in China since about 600,000 people were attacked in 2010 and 480,000 of them died (1,2). Lung cancer continues to be a difficult disease with a high mortality and symptom burden, in part because of frequent lung comorbidities, even the survivors often remain symptomatically and functionally limited. Surgery is the optimal treatment of early-stage lung cancer, when the pre-malignant or early lesions are amenable to resection and cure (3,4). Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality after lung resection surgery for lung cancer patients, let alone the burden of PPC on the patients (5). Thus, any intervention to reduce PPCs will have a valuable impact on clinical and cost-effectiveness outcomes