A Study on Self-care among the Lymphedema Patients / 성인간호학회지

PURPOSE: The purpose of this descriptive study was to gain basic data to develop a self-care protocol for the lymphedema patients. METHOD: The subjects of this study consisted of 115 patients with lymphedema from 8 hospitals and two community health and welfare centers in Busan and Seoul. The data was collected with questionnaire by self reporting of patients between March 2001 and December 2001. Data was analyzed by mean and percentage. RESULT: For self-care activities in daily life, compliance of 'use skin care preparations', 'use heat and cold', 'protect from local compression on affected limbs', 'protect from insect biting', 'use aids to protect affected limbs', 'take diuretics and take protein diet' did not reach to 50%. For self-care activities related to complex physical therapy, 28.7% of subjects complied with compression garment, 14.8% with manual lymph drainage, and 13.0% with exercise. 20.0% of subjects tried to treat with acupuncture and 13.9% with heat therapy. CONCLUSION: From this study, it is suggested that patients need to get a self-care education with correct information about self care activities and health care professionals need to develop more convenience self-care techniques of massage and exercise.

Development of Comprehensive Nursing Intervention for the Client with Lymphedema / 성인간호학회지

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was the development of a comprehensive nursing intervention program for the client with acute lymph stasis and stage I lymphedema. METHOD: The Quasi-experimental design using a non-equivalent control group was used. The subjects were 22 stroke patients with lymph stasis in the control group and 23 patients in the experimental group. The complex physical therapy of Casley-Smith was carried out to the control group for 10 hours, and comprehensive nursing intervention for the experimental group was carried out for 60 minutes. The data for this study was gathered from Feb. 2002 until June 2002 and pertains knowledge about lymphedema, self-care for managing lymphedema, and circumferences of affected limbs. Data was analyzed by mean, standard deviation, x2-test, and t-test. RESULT: The changes in knowledge about lymphedema, self-care practices, and circumference of affected limbs after nursing intervention did not show significant differences between control group and experiment group. CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that comprehensive nursing intervention had more efficiency than complex physical therapy in the treatment of edema for stroke patients because of it's simplicity and time saving. Thereby, the comprehensive nursing intervention program developed in this study would be a useful therapy for the clients with lymph stasis and early stage lymphedema.

Impact of Applying "Nursing Process Program" to Nursing Practice: Based on I.C.U. Nursing Practice / 기본간호학회지

This study was done to identify the effectiveness of applying a "Nursing Process Program" to the nursing students' clinical practice. The data collection period was from September 2000 to January 2001, and the subjects of the study were 39 students who were doing clinical practice in the ICU. The results are as follows; 1. Most subjects had a personal computer, had experience in using computers for one year and usually did word processing and internet, and wanted computerization of nursing work. The average results of the questions on the need for, and the effectiveness of applying a "Nursing Process Program" to clinical practice were, on five point scales, 4.07 and 4.21 respectively . 2. There were no significant differences in the mean scores for subjects' attitudes toward computers and computer anxiety between before and after using a "Nursing Process Program". 3. The total case study frequency using a "Nursing Process Program" was 68, and "Risk for infection" was the most frequent nursing diagnosis.

Transient Myocardial Ischemia in Ischemic Heart Disease

The ambulatory electrocardiographic examinations were performed in 31 patients (mean age of 59.4+/-9.3 yrs : male 16 cases, female 15 cases) with ischemic heart disease to evaluate the clinical features of ST segment more than 1 mm persisting for 45 seconds or longer. The incidence of associated disease are angina pectoris 14 cases, acute myocardial infarction 3 cases, old myocardial infarction 7 cases, hypertension 19 cases, diabetes mellitus 5 cases, cerebrovascular disease 4 cases, aortic regurgitation 2 cases, ventricular arrhythmia 1 case and chronic renal faliure 1 case. 93.7% of 252 monitored episodes of transient myocardial ischemia were silent. The incidence and duration of transient myocardial ischemia were 8.1+/-6.7 episodes/day (7.6+/-6.5episodes/day for silent myocardial ischemia, 0.5+/-0.9 episodes/day for silent ischemia, 7.6+/-14.1mins/day for symptomatic ischemia). The heart rate at the onset of ST segment depression is higher in symptomatic episode than silent episode (94.6+/-19.7 vs 82.1+/-17.4/min,. p<0.05). But duration of ST segment depression is longer in silent episode than symptomatic episode(32.4+/-97.7 vs 14.8+/-10.2/min,. p<0.01). Maximal ST segment depression was similar between silent and symptomatic episode (1.61+/-0.65 mm, 1.97+/-0.84 mm, repectively). 55.5% of silent episodes occurred during sleep or resting state and 60% of symptomatic episodes occurred during strenuous effort, exercise or eating (p<0.01). Transient myocardial ischemia developed not more frequently in the morning probably because the 24 hour Holter electrocadiographic examination was performed during hospitalization in the majority of cases.