Education
The most important step in treating a lymphedema patient is to educate the patient in all aspects of the condition: pathophysiology, manual lymphatic drainage, bandaging and exercise. When the patient understands the basic principles underlying their treatment protocol he or she is better able to grasp the seriousness of the condition and be compliant patients. Lymphedema is a condition that will persist throughout a lifetime, the overt symptoms may regress (edema) but once the low grade inflammatory process has begun, it will always be present to some degree in the patientÂ’s body. Although there is a 90% success rate in the initial treatment of lymphedema by a competent therapist (Foldi, 1999) as measured by a decrease in volumetric measurements in the edematous appendage, there is a wide variation in successful long-term outcomes and compliancy in patients.
Fu (2005) noted in his three year follow up study of lymphedema patients that those women who demonstrated competency and understood the importance of their exercises not only maintained better edema reductions, as measured by arm circumferential volumetric measurements, but were more compliant in other areas of their long-term treatment plan. Educating patients is the cornerstone of successful outcomes and should not be undervalued or overlooked in the treatment protocol.