(HS Sahni 065455 2024) Is Bone Health a Missing Link In Oncology Rehab?

Course overview

Patients undergoing cancer treatments experience a myriad of physical impairments affecting their quality of life. Oncological rehabilitation has become an integral part of ongoing therapies for these patients and has been the key to improving survivorship. However, accelerated bone loss, which survivors experience as a side-effect of cancer treatments, is mostly overlooked. Since continued loss of bone is a silent process, its first clinical implication is often a fracture. By this time, the window of preventive care has passed and the patient is left with additional impairments and sometimes, chronic pain leading to a further decline in quality of life. In addition to using therapeutic techniques to reverse physical impairments, strategies to improve bone health can greatly enhance the treatments and prevent debilitating fractures. This lecture will provide the clinicians with the knowledge of evidence based therapeutic exercises and nutrition for bone health, ready to be incorporated into onco-rehabilitation programs. The clinicians will learn this preventive program development based on FIIT principle and the use of applicable outcome measures to note progress.