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.