Sometimes I look at research & wonder how in the world I’m supposed to implement it – well buckle up, because Dr. Bolette Rafn, Dr. Kristin Campbell, & their team are taking world-class research & making easy to use for both clinicians & their patients to measure their upper extremity circumference & monitor for developing lymphedema. They have created an amazing video resource that is helping women all over the world take charge of their self-management & surveillance – are you using it yet?
Kristin Campbell, BSc, PT, PhD is a licensed physical therapist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of British Columbia. She also holds an appointment in the Cancer Control Program at the BC Cancer Research Centre. She is a member of the Oncology Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine.
She completed her PhD in exercise physiology at the University of Alberta and a Fellowship in Public Health at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre. Her research focus is on the role of exercise in cancer prevention, rehabilitation and survivorship has been funded by the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and Physiotherapy Foundation of Canada and others. She is associate editor for Physical Therapy, the journal of the American Physical Therapy Association, and the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (TJACSM).
She is the co-lead of the 2019 exercise guidelines for cancer survivors from the American College of Sports Medicine (Campbell et al. Med Sci Sports Ex 2019) and the multi-disciplinary International Working Group on Exercise and Bone Metastases, which will publish expert-consensus exercise recommendations for individuals with bone metastases in 2020.
Bolette Skjødt Rafn, BSc, PT, PhD is a licensed physical therapist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Copenhagen University Hospital Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark.
She completed her PhD at the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her research examines the health service needs of vulnerable, high-risk survivors of breast cancer with the overall aim to enhance the accessibility and quality of health services and improve patient-reported and clinical outcomes. She has developed novel clinical resources and outcome measurements to facilitate self-managed rehabilitation and detection of cancer-related late-effects. Her postdoc. project will be a multi-center randomized controlled trial that will test if self-managed prospective surveillance and early management can prevent the development of chronic lymphedema among women with breast cancer.
3:48 Bolette & Kristin’s pioneering work in oncology & lymphedema research
9:20 How this research came to life
14:03 Implementing these techniques into our practice
“With self-management, it’s not something you do by yourself…self-management is a collaboration between the patient & the healthcare professional.”
Dr. Bolette Rafn
Make sure you watch the video Bolette & Kristin’s team have created!
Rafn BS, McNeely ML, Camp PG, Midtgaard J, Campbell KL. Self-Measured Arm Circumference in Women With Breast Cancer Is Reliable and Valid. Phys Ther. 2019;99(2):240-253. doi: 10.1093/ptj/pzy117.