How long immune system recover

Some patients have very little if any immunosuppression, while others can have a compromised immune system for weeks or even longer. Patient should talk to their physician about the degree and duration of immunocompromise. There are medicines we commonly use to help the immune system recover quickly from chemotherapy.

These are often very appropriate and useful, but not always. What other recommendations do you have for people who are currently receiving chemotherapy or who recently received it? I am a big believer in physical activity before and after chemotherapy.

It helps patients recover faster from side effects. Even during treatment, exercise is beneficial if patients are able.

If chemotherapy causes neutropenia accompanied by a fever, your doctor may prescribe medications called colony-stimulating factors CSFs or white blood cell growth factors to be given along with your remaining chemotherapy treatments. These medications can help the body produce more neutrophils and other types of white blood cells, which strengthens your ability to fight off infection. Examples include:. These are given as a series of shots in between treatment cycles.

Although CSFs can reduce the risk of hospitalization due to infection, they can cause side effects such as aches in the bones, low-grade fever, and fatigue. Talk to your doctor to find out what is recommended for you.

Even after you finish treatment, it is important to follow steps for protecting yourself against infection until your immune system returns to normal. Create a profile for better recommendations. Breast implant illness BII is a term that some women and doctors use to refer to a wide range Sign up for emails about breast cancer news, virtual events, and more. Subscribe to our podcast for conversations on the issues that matter most. Join our online community to connect, share, and find peer support.

Was this article helpful? Can we help guide you? How does this work? And, other types of tissues that have been damaged by cancer can be more prone to infections. Certain cancer treatments can interfere with the way the immune system works.

The damage can be short- or long-term. For example, if a person with cancer has their spleen removed due to cancer, this causes long-term damage because the spleen is part of the immune system. On the other hand, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and chemotherapy, either alone or in combination can lead to short-term temporary immune system damage because they affect immune system blood cells for a fairly short period of time. A bone marrow or stem cell transplant uses very high-dose treatments to kill cancer cells that also damage immune system cells for weeks to months.

Any type of major surgery can weaken the immune system. Anesthesia the drugs used to make the patient sleep may play a role. It might take from 10 days to many months for the immune system to recover completely. Surgery also breaks the skin and can damage mucous membranes and tissue under the skin, causing it to be exposed to germs.

The wound caused by surgery the incision is a common place for infection. Things that raise the risk of infection after surgery include:. People with cancer may get antibiotics before and for a short time after having surgery to help protect them from infection. Chemotherapy often called chemo is the most common cause of a weakened immune system in people getting cancer treatment. Chemotherapy can cause neutropenia a decrease in the number of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, in your blood.

This means your body may not be able to fight infections as well as it should. The effects on the immune system depend on many things, including:. Some drugs affect the bone marrow and immune system more than others. After treatment ends, your blood cell counts usually go back to normal over time. Radiation therapy can also cause low white blood cell counts, which increases the risk for infections.

This type of radiation may be used during a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Today, radiation treatments are most often given over many sessions rather than in one large dose. This helps decrease the amount of skin and tissue damage, immune suppression, and the risk of infections.

Some types of targeted therapy can affect how the immune system works. They target a certain part of a cancer cell or a certain protein or enzyme that is on the surface of a cancer cell. Finding these targets helps the immune system see the cancer cells easier so it can attack them. Immunotherapy is used in certain types of cancer to help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells.

This can be done by giving treatments that help your own immune system work harder or smarter, or by giving you man-made immune system proteins or altered cells that are trained to find and attack cancer cells. Immunotherapy is sometimes used by itself to treat cancer, or used along with or after another type of treatment.

These treatments help the body have better immune reactions against cancer cells, but sometimes they change the way the immune system works. Because of this, people who get immunotherapy may be at risk for having a weaker immune system and getting infections. Because of this, stem cells either from the blood or bone marrow are removed from the patient and saved before the high-dose chemo is given.