Sickle Cell and Therapy
I’ve been wanting to talk about sickle cell since I started this blog. It doesn’t really fit in with the other categories because it’s not something that physical therapists treat. However, I think it’s important for all healthcare professionals to be aware of how to help alleviate the symptoms because that’s part of helping people and that’s what we’re here to do, isn’t it?
The following is a list of sickle cell complications that I pulled from the NIH site linked near the bottom of this post:
Acute Chest Syndrome
Acute Pain Crisis
Chronic Pain
Delayed Growth and Puberty
Eye Problems
Gallstones
Heart Problems
Infections
Joint Problems
Kidney Problems
Leg Ulcers
Liver Problems
Pregnancy Problems
Priapism
Severe Anemia
Stroke or Silent Brain Injury
Holy crow, that’s a lot of possible complications. What am I supposed to do about this?
If you’re in the therapy field, you may have a patient come in who is having an acute pain crisis. They may be experiencing too much pain to perform their exercises or focus on the work you’re doing together. What I have learned from listening to people who live with sickle cell is that, often times, heat and hydration will help. So, offering your patients some heating pads or warm blankets and plenty of water could help them feel more comfortable and make treatment more effective. If you’re in another healthcare field, you may not need patients to perform exercises but they would still appreciate the attentiveness to care if you’re able to offer them some warmth and water.
I have also seen people with sickle cell develop leg ulcers and not know what to do about it. If you find yourself with a patient suffering from leg ulcers, that patient may benefit from education on how to dress ulcer wounds or, if you’re comfortable with that, from you asking their PCP (or taking whatever legal route is necessary for your practice) if you can administer wound care treatment.
Image courtesy of Creative Commons
And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten on how to help patients with sickle cell, for therapy professionals. I would love to expand on this knowledge, so if you know something I haven’t said, please share it in the comments!
If you’re an educator in a healthcare field, this is the type of information you can incorporate into your curriculum to improve your students’ education and the healthcare experience for their future patients.
The NIH and CDC have accumulated some good info about sickle cell and I recommend reading up on it here:
