[Effect of lymphedema treatment--the interim report of prospective study at multiple facilities]

We are in the process of analyzing the effect of complex physical therapy (CPT) for the patients of secondary lymphedema associated with cancer treatment. At this time, we present an interim report of the past 3 months started in March 2009. We classified the lymphedema stage into four stages based on the International Society of Lymphology criterion using the imaging diagnosis (US, CT, etc.) in addition to a conventional observation. We also classified the CPT treatment period into two in accordance with water retention in the subcutaneous adipose tissue of the limbs. CPT was performed by the specialist of lymphedema treatment. We used the change in volume of limbs and QOL evaluation by SF-36 and Skindex29 for analysis. On this report, the volume of limbs, which has lymphedema and an improvement on SF-36, did not change significantly. This may have been resulted from not having enough follow-up period and lack of few cases at each stage in the analysis. However, we confirmed that the general and emotion evaluation on Skindex29 showed a meaningful change. We are still planning to accumulate more cases and study them for further detailed analysis.