Kbb Turbocharger Manual Lymphatic Drainage
Arm Groups Arm Description Assigned Intervention Other Manual lymphatic drainage therapy Patients will undergo a 50 min manual lymphatic drainage (MLD) therapy session by a certified lymphedema therapist. MLD therapy is performed routinely for standard of care in these patients and consists of light massage to facilitate lymphatic fluid mobility.
• Procedure: Manual lymphatic drainage therapy Patients will undergo a 50 min manual lymphatic drainage (MLD) therapy session by a certified lymphedema therapist. MLD therapy is performed routinely for standard of care in these patients and consists of light massage to facilitate lymphatic fluid mobility. Detailed Description Lymphedema is a chronic, debilitating disease caused by lymphatic flow obstruction. Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) secondary to mastectomy and/or radiation therapy is a growing health concern, with a reported incidence as high as 94% in breast cancer survivors.
Manual Lymphatic Drainage Techniques
Behavioral adjustments and aggressive therapeutic management can reduce long-term impairment and optimize quality of life. However, there is currently no standard clinical procedure for identifying patients at greatest BCRL risk and fundamental gaps exist in even our basic knowledge of how the lymphatic system responds to node dissection and subsequent therapy. Specialized imaging methods have demonstrated that reduced lymphatic flow velocity and lymphatic contractility impairment may signify greater BCRL risk, however these approaches frequently require radioactive tracers or exogenous contrast agents which alter the physiological environment and are primarily available only in specialized centers. As such, these methods are simply impractical for routine BCRL monitoring in humans or for reporting clinical trial endpoints. Recent work has demonstrated that spin labeling, a popular and noninvasive MRI method for measuring perfusion, can be adapted to measure lymphatic fluid flow to axillary lymph nodes.