What Is Lymphedema?

Lymphedema is a lasting increase in the volume of an arm or a leg linked to an accumulation of lymph. Most often, lymphedema is the result of surgery or treatment for cancer , especially breast cancer. Lymphedema can be complicated by infections, loss of mobility of the affected limb, or even an overall reduction in quality of life.

The treatment of lymphedema is based on a set of measures: reduction of the volume of the affected limb by compression, physical exercises, drainage lymphatic manual and tips to prevent skin infections. This treatment does not cure lymphedema, but allows the reduction of symptoms and maintaining quality of life.

What is lymph and the lymphatic system?

Blood is not the only liquid that irrigates our body. The lymph is a slightly yellowish liquid which circulates in special vessels called “vessels lymphatic “. It arises at the tissue level from the plasma and white blood cells, which filter capillaries (the smallest blood vessels). The lymph is gradually collected in lymphatic capillaries, then increasingly wide lymphatic vessels which reject it into the bloodstream at the level of the veins located under the clavicles.

Every day, about three liters of lymph return to the bloodstream. Along the way, the lymph is filtered in lymph nodes lymphatic found in various regions of the body (the lymph nodes which swell and become painful during an infection).

Unlike the blood that circulates thanks to the contractions of the heart, the circulation of lymph is activated by the movement of all the muscles of the body, including those of respiration. It moves much slower than blood.

What does lymph do?

The lymph is a liquid close to plasma, the liquid in which the blood cells bathe. It contains white blood cells, and in particular lymphocytes, essential for immune defenses. It also contains waste products, in particular large proteins for which the lymphatic system is the only one way of elimination. Thus, the lymph is important both for the immunity and for the elimination of cellular waste.

In the lymph nodes lymphatic located on its route, the lymph is filtered. When a microbe contained in the lymph is stopped by a ganglion, the immune reaction is triggered: the immune cells multiply, the ganglion swells.

In people who suffer from cancer cell of the tumor can pass in the lymph. They remain stuck in the first lymph nodes they reach: this is called “nodal invasion”. When it removes a tumor, the surgeon will systematically remove the lymph nodes closest to the tumor to check for possible invasion. When the lymph nodes are invaded by tumor cells, cancer is considered more advanced than a cancer who did not reach the lymph nodes.

When the lymph nodes allow cancerous cells to pass through, these moves with the lymph and will establish themselves in other organs (liver, lung, bone, brain, for example): this is the formation of metastases.

What is lymphedema?

Lymphedema is a lasting increase in the volume of an arm or a leg, rarest of the external genitalia, linked to an accumulation of lymph. This swelling appears when the vessels lymphatic premises no longer drain water efficiently enough lymph, which then accumulates in the tissues under the skin. Most often, lymphedema is the result of an event that will locally damage part of the lymphatic system and partially block the circulation of the lymph: surgery, trauma, cancer, parasitic infection, etc. They are called secondary lymphedema.

There is, more rarely, so-called primary lymphedema which appears in people who have congenital malformations of the lymphatic. They only affect the legs (one or both) or the genitals. They generally occur in the form of isolated cases in a young patient after puberty (girls are more affected).