quote:

Nora Dowd Eisenhower August 17, 2009 5:00 pm
My mother, despite never having been a smoker or drinker, was diagnosed with mouth cancer 4 years ago. The tumor on her tongue was excised, and the lymph nodes on one side of her neck removed. She then received very aggressive radiotherapy for almost 6 months.

Thankfully she is now cancer free, fit and healthy. She does, however suffer from lymphodaema frequently which causes one whole side of her face to swell. It often happens when she is tired or has been travelling. She eats a healthy diet and has a physically active job- what can she do to improve the condition?

We would really appreciate any help you might be able to provide, though I understand that this is veering slightly from the breast cancer topic.

FROM DR. SCHMITZ:
I have completed a pilot study that attempted to translate the PAL intervention (the weight lifting study described this month in the New England Journal) to those with lower limb lymphedema secondary to cancer. To my knowledge, there have been no studies on the topic of exercise and lymphedema after head and neck cancers. The difficulty is that there are so few of these patients, compared to breast cancer, that finding enough of them in one place to do a study like PAL would be really challenging. I can share that the pilot study we did with lower limb lymphedema made very clear that assuming the results for arm lymphedema were transferrable to other sites is a bad idea. I would recommend that your mother work with a well trained lymphatic therapist. Go to http://www.lymphnet.org and navigate around the site to learn about appropriate training for lymphatic therapists and to find a listing of lymphedema therapists in places across the United States who have completed the training recommended by the National Lymphedema Network.