2.2. Participants
asthenia, death, illness, oncologic disease
ONCOLOGY, PROGRESSION, DISEASE
Participants were recruited at the Oncology Hospitalization Unit at the time of hospitalization, and were included in the study after voluntarily signing the informed consent and meeting the selection criteria. Inclusion criteria: Diagnosis of an oncological disease, over 18 years of age, hospitalized in the Oncology Hospitalization Unit, score between 15 and 55 points on the Barthel Index (BI), score of 4 or more on the visual analog scale (VAS) for cancer-related asthenia, and voluntarily signed the informed consent for participation in the study. Exclusion criteria: A cognitive status lower than 23 points on the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), which makes it difficult to understand the indications during the study, and a hemoglobin level lower than 10 g/dL. Withdrawal criteria: Progression of the oncologic disease leading to an end-of-life stage of illness or death, and failure to complete the follow-up and final evaluations.Randomization, allocation, and blinding: The recruited subjects, once they met the selection criteria, were randomly assigned to one of the two study groups (Participants were not blinded due to the nature of the intervention in each group. However, to increase the rigor of the study, the investigators who performed the assessments and those who conducted the statistical analysis were blinded and were unaware of the assignment of the participants to the two groups.Sample size: The sample size was estimated using the program EPIDAT 4.2, accepting an alpha risk of 0.05 and a beta risk of 0.2 in a two-sided test. Twenty-five subjects were necessary in first group and twenty-five in the second to recognize as statistically significant a difference greater than or equal to 7.5 units in the Barthel Index score, which was considered as a primary variable. The common standard deviation was assumed to be 8.3 units [