How do children with leukemia exercise? Doctors give advice

Regarding exercise recommendations, we would like to talk about the following aspects:

(1) Movement conditions

This should be classified according to whether the child has cardiomyopathy and radiotherapy and chemotherapy, children who have received anthracycline antibiotic treatment, should be classified according to whether there is cardiomyopathy, anthracycline drug accumulation and whether there has been an irradiation treatment, for different types of children, the doctor will encourage them to carry out the same time of aerobic exercise, but children with myocardial damage should appropriately reduce the amount of strength training, maximize the safety of exercise, and let the child return to normal life (the child needs to check the blood picture regularly after being discharged home, neutrophils > 1.0 × 109/L, no fever; hemoglobin greater than 90 g/L; platelet count greater than 20 × 109/L, no bleeding tendency, which can be used as an indicator of outdoor exercise).

(2) Cultivate children to develop good living habits

In general, doctors will recommend that children be active for at least 1 hour a day, or have a longer activity time appropriate to their age, and should participate in several groups of activities lasting more than 15 minutes per day, and avoid long periods of non-exercise, especially during the day when watching TV and playing computers for a long time. In addition, the child's exercise level should take into account the child's own disease status and the stage of treatment, weight-bearing exercise can enhance muscle strength, promote bone accumulation, and can increase the child's cognitive training at rest.

(3) Training with greater intensity

Scientists believe that for children during the maintenance period and after complete drug cessation, it is recommended to do moderate to high intensity exercise to improve physical fitness (moderate intensity exercise is similar to brisk walking and cycling intensity, high-intensity exercise can greatly increase breathing rate and heart rate, such as jogging, aerobics, cycling uphill, etc.), it is recommended that children participate in at least 4 times a week, or preferably 1 hour a day.

Exercise on the overall health of children with leukemia is very important, in general, the doctor will be based on the child's primary disease efficacy, treatment stage and individual differences, reasonable development of hospital chemotherapy and discharge maintenance treatment during the child's physical exercise program, can avoid or reduce the primary disease and treatment of the cause of the child's motor function decreased, abnormal psychological state, and unaccustomed, dislike with people and other bad effects.

The material of this article is selected from the "Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Childhood Leukemia" organized by the Red Cross Foundation of China

Source: Red Cross Foundation of China