BENEFITS OF PHYSIOTHERAPY ON THE CANCER PATIENT

To those who may not be much familiar, physical therapy may be associated with musculoskeletal conditions such as arthritis, back pains, and sport injuries. While physical therapy has been very advantageous to these conditions, the benefits of this treatment and rehabilitative medicine extend beyond these areas, even including patients suffering from cancer. The following are the benefits a cancer patient may derive with physical therapy.

Weakness and Fatigue

Due to the medications and perhaps the effects of the disease, a patient may feel weakened and fatigued most of the time. Muscles that have not been used may have lost their strength, adding to the general feeling of weakness. A physical therapist will evaluate your general condition and come up with a program that will address this feeling of weakness and fatigue. This will include among others exercises designed to add strength to your muscles, improve mobility, conserve energy so as not get tired easily, and relieve stress that may have added to these gloomy feelings.

Balance and Coordination

The loss of muscle strength and the resulting weakness may hamper your balance and may even put you at risk of dangerous falls. Other treatment methods such as chemotherapy may also affect your balance due to the loss of sensation in your body parts. The extent of the loss of balance and coordination will be appraised by the therapist and will come up with a recommendation. Focus will be on exercises that will help in your balance and improvement of sensory faculties. Strengthening exercise will also be very useful in providing you the
balance and stability.

Flexibility and Mobility

In almost all cases, a cancer patient may lose some form of flexibility and mobility due to lack of activity and effects of some medications. All these may lead to stiffness and swelling in some instances. This can really add to the woes of the patient who may have to spend much of the time lying down or stationary. On this aspect, the services of a physical therapist become very valuable since the therapist can apply numerous techniques in giving you flexibility and mobility. These will consist of specialized exercises and may even use specific PT modalities or tools to achieve the objective.

Other Benefits of Physical Therapy

Aside from those already mentioned, a cancer patient may also gain much from physical therapy, depending on the needs of the patient. A thorough evaluation will determine what needs to be accomplished to provide the patient as much ease and comfort as possible. Swelling and inflammation, which may be experienced by some patients, may be minimized or controlled with the proper PT program. The issue of scar tissues resulting from the treatment will also be dealt with during
therapy. And of course, regaining of strength and endurance will be a prime objective under the program.