Background : the surgery of breast cancer, like any other surgery, may bring about some problems and complications, which the knowledge of these problems may be an effective way for prevention of or dealing with the complications. The motor and sensory impairment in the upper limb of the surgery side necessitates the utilization of the rehabilitation methods. The main purpose of this research is to show the effect of three methods of exercise Pilates, yoga and active commons on range of motion and edema of upper limb in the females suffering from breast cancer after going through surgery.
Methods: this quasi- experimental study was conducted on 38 patients randomly chosen among the patients referring to Cancer Institute. The designed exercise included 5 "Mat Pilates" moves for pilates group and 5 "asana yoga" moves for yoga group which were done for 15 sessions until the patient reached fatigue borderlines. Meantime, the control group was busy doing active exercises common in physiotherapy center. The range of motion and edema of upper limb was measured before and after applying the designed exercise. For describing the data, the mean and standard deviation, and for inferential analysis, the correlated T-tests and one way analysis of variance were used in level of significance of 5%, to compare the variants before and after applying the designed exercise.
Results: the results, showed a significant difference between the flexion, extension, and internal & external rotation of shoulder, flexion & extension of elbow, flexion, extension, supination deviation and pronation deviation of the wrist and forearm before and after experiment in Pilates and yoga groups. While in the control group, flexion, extension, internal & external rotation of shoulder, flexion & extension of elbow, and flexion of wrist showed a significant difference before and after the experiment.