New News on Lymphedema

Lymphedema has long been known as a life long complication from breast cancer surgery.

I am not a doctor but here is my understanding of lymphedema: the lymph system is a second system in your body connecting hundreds of lymph nodes which help clean out your body and heal injuries or diseases. When you have surgery the lymph system is often impaired because it does not heal and reconnect after. If the lymph system is unconnected to the rest, you can end up with swollen body parts, or lymphedema.

After breast cancer if a bunch of nodes are removed under your arm as with an axillary node dissection, you can end up with problems. In previous decades when a radical mastectomy was routine treatment for breast cancer, lymphedema occurred regularly for patients. Now they skip start with the sentinel nodes which are assumed where breast cancer starts to spread and then only if they are positive, do you get an axillary node dissection.

What they told me is that if you have an axillary node dissection the chances were high of getting lymphedema. I was told that do not strain your arm, no shots or needle pricks, or blood pressure cuffs, no purse straps over your arm, no, no, no, no, no.... Basically baby that arm for the rest of your life. I do regular exercises at the gym but I do them at lower weights than my right so I don't strain it. Blah, blah, blah, blah....

So with me, I had one tiny positive node in the sentinel node so I had an axillary node dissection after my lumpectomy. Then I had chemo and radiation. Then I followed all directions and was fine, until I fell the following winter and used my left arm to break my fall. And voila, lymphedema (and no its never goes away).

But now there is new information on lymphedema. I got this from Barbara over at Let Life Happen where she wrote about "Debunking the Lymphedema Risk". There was a recent new study done on causes of lymphedema.

"The study found that chemotherapy, more advanced disease and greater than normal body weight significantly increased the risk of lymphedema for patients who had surgery of lymph nodes under their arms to assess the spread of cancer. Radiation therapy also strongly correlated with lymphedema for patients undergoing axillary node dissection (ALND), the more invasive form of axillary surgery.

"“Lymphedema rate was significantly lower among patients undergoing axillary surgery without these additional risk factors,” says study co-author Judy Boughey, M.D., FACS, professor of surgery and research chair, department of surgery at Mayo Clinic. “We must recognize that today, breast cancer is no longer a disease treated primarily through surgery, and many therapies impact the risk of this chronic condition. Risk factors appeared to be cumulative, affecting women in a step-like fashion.”

So this was my chronology with my stage II breast cancer: lumpectomy (June), axillary node dissection (July), chemotherapy (August through December, lumpectomy (December), radiation (late January through early March). I was normal body weight before breast cancer. After breast cancer about the same. My weight gain came later.... So I did not have advanced disease nor overweight but I did have chemotherapy and radiation.

Nevermind me, I just find it very interesting that the sole cause was not the surgery but the combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.