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Caring for Bones During Cancer

Summary & Participants

People living with cancer often face the prospect of their cancer spreading to the bone, or of their cancer treatments damaging bone strength. Learn what can be done to protect bone from the complications of cancer.

Medically Reviewed On: July 21, 2009

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: A major concern of many of those living with cancer is how to prevent their disease from spreading and causing further complications, particularly to their bones.

ROGER WALTZMAN, MD: Bone complications from cancer are varied. It usually implies that the cancer has spread to a bone and those complications can be pain, for sure or they can be fractures of the bone, and certainly that leads to pain, as well.

BOB SMITH, MD: In the instance of bone metastases, I think the three diseases that I think most about from that standpoint are patients with multiple myeloma, patients with advanced breast cancer and patients with prostate cancer.

ANNOUNCER: When patients first begin cancer treatment, one goal is to try and stop the spread of the disease to other parts of the body.

ROGER WALTZMAN, MD: Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, all these are used with curative intent for patients when they first present with a cancer to try to prevent it from recurring in any other part of the body.

ANNOUNCER: But some cancer treatments can actually contribute to bone loss.

HOPE RUGO, MD: When you have cancer and you get treated for that cancer, some of the medications can either hasten bone loss because of their own damage. So that kind of quick loss of bone means that you're at higher risk for osteoporosis, thinning of the bone, and for bone fractures, which can cause a lot of problems.

BOB SMITH, MD: Men with prostate cancer are at especially high risk of osteoporosis. Treatment of men with drugs that prevent testosterone production are more osteoporosis-causing than actually even treatment, say, with corticosteroids. So it's a major problem, and becoming a major problem in men with prostate cancer.

ANNOUNCER: When bone complications do happen, there are several treatment options available especially to manage the pain that usually occurs.

ROGER WALTZMAN, MD: One primary therapy is pain medication. So strong pain medications are used and should be used. There are radiation therapies that are used very effectively to control pain so what we call spot radiation therapy where it's just given to a small, isolated area where there might be involvement of a bone with cancer and that can be delivered usually over a couple of weeks as an outpatient.

And ultimately surgery is used if bones fracture and need to be stabilized for both safety's sake as well as for mobility.

ANNOUNCER: There are also medications called bisphosphonates which can help prevent further bone destruction.

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