Cancer-Related Fatigue, NCCN Version 2.2015

NCCN Guidelines 2015
  
Defining Cancer-Related Fatigue

The panel defines CRF as a distressing, persistent, subjective sense of physical, emotional, and/or cognitive tiredness or exhaustion related to cancer or cancer treatment that is not proportional to recent activity and interferes with usual functioning. Compared with the fatigue experienced by healthy individuals, CRF is more severe, more distressing, and less likely to be relieved by rest. In terms of the defining characteristics, the subjective sense of tiredness reported by the patient is important to note. As with pain, the clinician must rely on the description of fatigue and accompanying distress provided by the patient.....


Exercise interventions must be used with caution in patients with any of the following:

• Bone metastases
• Thrombocytopenia (low platelets)
• Anemia (low red blood cells)
• Fever or active infection
• Limitations secondary to metastasis or other comorbid illnesses