Side Effect and Symptom Management
Patients undergoing therapies for CRC experience an array of symptoms related to their illness and its treatment-related symptoms affecting gastrointestinal, neurologic, integumentary, immunologic, renal, and vascular systems. Late recognition and under-treatment of symptoms and side effects often can lead to more serious or even life-threatening complications. In addition, unmanaged symptom distress can limit your patient's ability to remain on therapy and may result in diminished quality of life (QOL). Here is where you can make a significant difference for your patients.
You are in a strategic position to minimize symptom distress and optimize QOL for your patients through early identification and timely intervention. Through these actions, you can help prevent or manage CRC-related symptoms and the resulting physical and emotional distress that interferes with your patients' performance and lifestyle patterns.
This section is designed to familiarize you with or refresh your knowledge about parameters for quick assessment in clinic or by telephone, preparative regimens developed to prevent side effects of therapy, and patient care protocols for managing commonly occurring symptoms. Each of the following symptoms is profiled along with helpful assessment tools, patient care protocols, and links to national standards where they exist. Just click on the symptom for which you would like more information:
- Anorexia
- Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV)
- Cognitive Dysfunction
- Cutaneous Side Effects
- Depression
- Diarrhea
- Extravasation
- Fatigue
- Hand-foot syndrome (HFS)
- Hypertension
- Hypersensitivity reactions (HSR)
- Mucositis
- Myelosuppression
- Neurotoxicity
- Ocular changes
- Proteinuria
- Sexual issues
- Sleep Disorders
You've reached the end of this section.
[ Previous Page ] [ Home ]
This page was last modified on 7/1/2008, at 11:29:13 am ET.
Web site developed by Meniscus Limited.
