Breast Surgery
Exercise helps to decrease any side effect after surgery and helps you to return to normal daily activities, also prevents shoulder stiffness after surgery.
Advised by your physiotherapist
You should do the exercises as often as possible. When resting the arm on the operated side supported the arm on a pillow and try not to let it hang down by your side.

  1. Open and close your fingers as if making a fist.
  2. Move your wrist up and down as if waving
  3. Bend your elbow and straighten it out fully
  4. Shrug your shoulders
  5. Press your shoulder blades back together.
  6. Turn your head from side to side
  7. Join your hands and keep your elbows straight. Lift your arms up to eye level. This exercise can be done either sitting or lying. If you have had an axillary node clearance do not stretch your arms over eye level for the first 7 days post -surgery.
  8. Sit up in a chair or lie on your back, with your hands behind your neck and your elbows pointing forward. Move your elbows apart back to the chair or bed. You will need to achieve good flexibility in this exercise if you will require radiotherapy treatment.

Once the drains have been removed you can include the following exercises:

  1. Stand facing a wall. Walk your fingers up the wall as high as possible, reverse down in the same way.
  2. Stand with your non-affected arm against the wall. Raise your arm up sideways toward your head with the thumb leading the way (like the arm of a clock).

You may have a burning, tingling, numbness or soreness on the back of the arm and or chest wall. The surgery can irritate the nerves. These feelings may increase a few weeks after surgery. Rubbing or stroking the area with your hand or a soft cloth can help make the area less sensitive.

Exercise to help improve aerobic (heart-lung) capacity is also important for women who have had breast cancer. There’s evidence that fitness and weight loss may even help lower the risk that some types of cancer recurring after treatment. Ask your doctor about fitness exercises during and after breast cancer treatment.

Other exercises are designed to help reduce your risk of lymphedema, or swelling in the arm on the side where you had surgery. The exercises shown here are mainly designed to help regain range of motion (flexibility) of the arm and shoulder. Ask your doctor about your lymphedema risk and if you should use exercises to help reduce that risk.

  • Lymphedema is a build-up of lymph fluid in the fatty tissues just under your skin. This build-up causes swelling (or edema), most often in the arms or legs. Lymphedema can be the result from surgery or radiation therapy to treat certain cancers. During surgery for cancer the doctor may take out lymph nodes near the tumor to see if the cancer has spread.

  • Our bodies have a network of lymph nodes and lymph vessels that collect and carry watery, clear lymph fluid, much like veins collect blood from distant parts of the body (like the hands and arms) and carry it back to the heart.

  • Lymph fluid contains proteins, salts, and water, as well as white blood cells, which help fight infection. In the lymph vessels, one-way valves work with body muscles to help move the fluid through the body and control the flow.

  • Lymph nodes are small collections of tissue along the lymph vessels that work as filters for harmful substances and help fight infection. Taking out lymph nodes and vessels makes it harder for the lymph fluid in the arms, legs, or other body parts to flow to the chest where it can get back into the bloodstream. If the remaining lymph vessels cannot remove enough of the fluid in the area, the fluid builds up and causes swelling, or lymphedema.