[Educational intervention for self-management of continuous drainage in the postoperative period of mastectomy]

This study assessed how well patients who had undergone breast cancer surgery monitored their continuous drainage system after receiving one-to-one instructions at the Mastology Outpatient Clinic of Hospital São Paulo at Federal University of São Paulo. Participants were 79 women who had undergone breast cancer surgery between May 2009 and March 2010, and were using a drain. It was found that the self-care training that the patients received in addition to the strategy used in that training, had a positive effect on their self-monitoring of the continuous drainage, which prevented the drain from clogging, evinced by the percentage of patients who maintained the permeability of the drainage system (84.2%).