Guidelines recommend: compression, massage, skin care,exercise, and elevation. Other options may include surgery, drugs, and alternative or complimentary interventions. The most often talked about areas for lymphedema include the hand and the arm but it is also possible but limited that it can be of the chest wall or breast region. The most used treatment for this area of lymphedema include: self massage, compression garments, therapy delivering manual lymphatic drain and exercise. It may also include self bandaging and even a low fat diet or even surgery. No one modality provides complete remediation but most did report some relief. Most will say that the compression garment is very effective. Putting on a compression garment can be difficult and time consuming and these items are very expensive in the realm of things
Lymphedema is progressive and it is known that early intervention is believed to provide the best chance of avoiding progression. It is imperative to talk to your healthcare provider if you feel a fullness or heaviness and to re-emphasize, earlier intervention is extremely helpful to avoid progression of the lymphedema. There are many different aspects of intervention that may be used and you may need more than one intervention to get to a point of some relief. It is also important to identify this to see what coverage may be available as this is a difficult area for coverage or limited coverage. I recall my grandmother, who had breast cancer and a mastectomy, putting on a plastic blow up sleeve for her whole arm and each night we would blow it up just like a beach toy and that is how she slept with this blow up sleeve from the wrist to her armpit. We are continuing to learn more about how to better address this difficulty as it not only pertains to breast cancer patients but any patient that has lymph node removal.
Having put this out to you, make it a great day!
S