ABSTRACT
Lymphedema of the lower limbs often contributes to the mobility impairment of morbidly obese patients. Defining novel costeffective protocols is important for reducing treatment costs. The study aimed to assess if Capacitive and Resistive Energy Transfer (TECAR) can reduce edema and the minimum number of sessions needed to observe volume reduction. Forty-eight severely obese subjects (age range: 46-78 years; BMI >40 kg/m2) with bilateral lower limb lymphedema were divided into three groups undergoing either manual lymphatic drainage, pressure therapy, or TECAR, in addition to a multidisciplinary rehabilitation program. They were compared to a control group composed by 12 women (age: 67.4 ± 8.9 years, BMI: 44.6 ± 4.1 Kg/m2) undergoing only the rehabilitation program. A handheld laser scanner 3D system was used for volume measurements. In addition, patients were evaluated with a Timed Up and Go (TUG) test and pain/heaviness of the lower limbs with a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). A significant volume reduction was observed after 6 sessions of TECAR: specifically, in the whole limb (PRE: 9.7+2.8 dm3; POST: 9.4+2.8 dm3; p<0.05) and in the thigh (PRE: 3.5+1.3 dm3; POST: 3.3+1.2 dm3; p<0.05). The TUG and VAS for pain showed a significant improvement in all groups. Our preliminary results suggest that TECAR can provide a relatively early reduction of lower limb edema with improvement of patients' function and pain.
Subject(s)
Lymphedema/therapy , Physical Therapy Modalities , Pressure , Aged , Case-Control Studies , Diagnostic Imaging , Female , Humans , Leg/pathology , Lymphedema/diagnosis , Lymphedema/etiology , Lymphedema/rehabilitation , Male , Manual Lymphatic Drainage , Middle Aged , Obesity/complications , Organ Size , Treatment OutcomeABSTRACT
In [Phys. Rev. E 57, 6470 (1998)]] a thorough characterization in terms of receiver operating characteristics of stochastic-resonance detectors of weak harmonic signals of known frequency in additive Gaussian noise was given. It was shown that strobed sign-counting based strategies can be used to achieve a nice trade-off between performance and cost, by comparison with noncoherent correlators. Here we discuss the more realistic case where besides the sought signal (whose frequency is assumed known) further unwanted spectrally nearby signals with comparable amplitude are present. Rejection properties are discussed in terms of suitably defined false-alarm and false-dismissal probabilities for various values of interfering signal(s) strength and spectral separation.
