This is a part of the Hot Topic podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Exercise After Burn Injury. Jeffrey Schneider, MD, researcher, discusses Why Exercise Is Critical After Burn Injury.

Jeffrey Schneider, M.D.

Project Director, Boston-Harvard Burn Injury Model System Center

Medical Director, Burn & Trauma, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital

Exercise is important after a burn injury for a couple of different reasons. For one, to combat and recover from this period of prolonged immobility and muscle wasting and really the consequences of being in the hospital for so long and not moving or exercising in any way.

You can imagine if you’re lying in bed and because your injury is so severe you’re unable to even move, you’re chemically sedated, put into a chemically induced coma. You know, what we take for granted of normal moving around every day doesn’t occur. And so as a result, you know, our muscles waste and we develop other consequences from this, skin breakdown and contractures of the joints.

You know, exercise is needed to simply overcome and combat and, you know, get back to sort of where you were in the first place before the injury occurred. But in addition sort of some of these complications that occur, you know, some of the best interventions for those complications are the exercise itself.

Visit https://msktc.org/burn and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with burn injury. That’s https://msktc.org/burn.