| 34 |
Oral Abstracts (Session 3 of 5)
|
(Presentation 34.5) Assessment of local tissue edema in arms of women with postmastectomy lymphedema Harvey N. Mayrovitz, PhD; Dawn Brown-Cross, PT, PhD; E. Washington, MS, Nova Southeastern University College of Medical Sciences, Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Fla Purpose: Quantitative assessment of local tissue edema could provide useful information in several clinical conditions. One potential method is based on the fact that tissue electrical properties depend on water content, which in turn affects the value of the tissue dielectric constant (TDC). A device* to measure TDC and thereby estimate skin-to-fat relative tissue water (RTW) has recently been developed. The authors’ goal was to determine the suitability of this approach to detect edema in patients with unilateral arm lymphedema secondary to breast cancer treatment. The authors hypothesized that the TDC of affected arms would be significantly elevated compared to contralateral arms. Methods: Relative tissue water was determined from measured TDC values (0–80) at 300 MHz in edematous (E) and contralateral normal (N) forearms of 10 patients. Four skin depths (0.5 mm, 1.5 mm, 2.5 mm, and 5 mm) were assessed using 4 different probes. Volume (V) of a 4-cm segment encompassing the RTW measurement site was determined by arm circumferences and calculations using an elliptical frustum model. Edema percentage was calculated as 100(VE–VN)/VN. Similar measurements were done in a control group of 10 women. Results: For the patient group, volumes of edematous segments were 268+/-53 mL as compared to 195+/-42 mL (P < 0.0001) for contralateral arms. This volume difference represented a percentage edema of 39.0%+/-17.6%. Similarly, for all measured depths, edematous arms had significantly greater RTW values. For example, at a depth of 2.5 mm edematous versus contralateral RTW values were 41.1+/-8.8 versus 31.7+/-3.7 (P < 0.0001). For the control group, neither volumes (181+/-39 versus 179+/-38 mL) nor RTW values differed significantly between arms 26.1+/-3.3 vs. 26.0+/-3.7 (P > 0.5). Conclusions: These findings suggest that this method may serve as a rapid quantitative assessment procedure to document lymphedema and possibly for early detection of incipient lymphedema not yet clinically observable. Possibilities to assess periwound edema are being investigated. *Delfin MoistureMeter-D, Delfin Technologies, Kuopio, Finland |
|