Eight weeks of exercise intervention improve visuomotor and functional capacity, performance, and physiological profile in a choroidal melanoma patient.

The aim of this case-study was to investigate the effects of an 8-week combined exercise intervention, consisting of visual-coordinative and high-intensity interval training (HIIT), on the physical and visuomotor-functional capacity, performance, and physiological profile of a moderately active 29-year-old man diagnosed with choroidal melanoma of the left eye. Data were collected on three occasions: at the initial diagnosis (T0), after hospitalization and radiotherapy treatment (T1), and following the recovery through the exercise intervention (T2), spanning a total of 17 weeks. The primary outcome variables consisted of visuomotor and functional tests (VFT), cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and microvascular circulation measured via flicker-light induced dilation (FiD). For visuomotor tests in general, a significant decline was observed between baseline T0 and T1 (by 6-22%), followed by significant improvements at T2 (by 11-36%), surpassing the initially observed T0 values. The cardio-pulmonary exercise testing (CPET)-derived parameters exhibited a similar pattern, declining from T0 to T1 (by 8-12% for peak V̇O2 , peak PO, and CPET duration, respectively), with a subsequent recovery observed in response to 8 weeks of exercise training (T2), resulting in increases of 11-25% for V̇O2 , peak PO, and CPET duration. Interestingly, the dilation of both arteries and veins in response to FiD stimulus exhibited a twofold increase compared to baseline levels. Our results suggest that the 8-week exercise intervention improved patients' VFT and CRF profiles and exceeded baseline values. However, further research with a more robust methodology and a larger sample size is needed to comprehensively explain changes in FiD.