Caring for Bones During Cancer Video Transcript

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: To help reduce the risk of bone complications, there are steps a cancer patient can take. First up is calcium intake.

HOPE RUGO, MD: Most adults are not taking in enough calcium from their diet for that to be their only source. So we really recommend that women and men who are in these situations take at least a 1000 mg of calcium a day; a gram is another way to describe that amount. On the other hand, we don't recommend that they take many grams of calcium, because then they can get complications like kidney stones, which are quite painful.

The second is to maintain exercise levels; that helps with bone density and it also helps with quality of life and ability to stand the treatment with better quality of life.

ROGER WALTZMAN, MD: It's important to keep your bones strong, because weakening of the bones can result in fractures for any reason at all, whether there's cancer in the bone or not and certainly a patient's ability to continue therapies is highly dependent on what their functional status is, what their ability is to get up and around and pursue treatment and be able to tolerate potential side effects of treatment.

ANNOUNCER: Despite the tendency of bone complications to arise, those with cancer can take a lead role in helping to protect themselves from the potentially debilitating effects.

ROGER WALTZMAN, MD: There's always something the patient can do. The most important thing really is being aware of symptoms. So being able to inform their doctor or nurse when there is a new bone pain, or something that seems more severe than it has been so we can investigate it quickly and try to stop the problem before it becomes more serious.

Related Videos

Bone Complications in Breast Cancer
Coping with Bone Issues in Cancer