Monitoring For Swelling

Monitoring For Swelling

I want to teach you how to monitor for swelling on that surgical arm going forward so there's a graph that you can print out off of the website that you can use to track your swelling over. of time and you just fill it in and the corresponding measurement locations so what you'll need at home is you'll need a tape measure that has centimeters on it we're going to use the centimeter side to measure some more accurate way to track your swelling and then what we're looking for overtime is a change of 2 cm or more from your very first measurement so you want to keep that that graph handy for you so that you have a way to track your swelling we also if you find doing the circumferences are too difficult or too time-consuming we can also put you through one of our other lymphedema surveillance programs using our Sozo machine which uses the bioelectrical impedance signal to kind of track through your body and tell us your subclinical signs of swelling that you might have and there is a link to that on our website for you if you want more information regarding the Sozo program okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this so that the inches are up so that when I measure around your arm it reads centimeters for me and I'm going to start at your knuckles so I'm going to take my measure pulling it nice and straight and I'm just going to come straight across your knuckles getting my tapes to align as close to each other as possible and I'm going to get my measurement and then I would write that down on the corresponding spot on my graph and then we're going to go up your arm for several more measures so the next one we're going to do is that your wrist so you want to find those two little bones right there at your wrist and that's what you want to measure around so I'm just going to take my measure again or I did those bones keeping it nice and straight and I don't want to put a lot of tension on it when I'm measuring I want it to just be tight enough that there's no gaps but I don't want to try to cut into the skin of the arm where I'm measuring and then I would write that down and then our next measurement is going to be 10 cm up from that point so it would be handy to have a washable marker or a pen or in this case this is a skin marker that we use it's kind of like a like an eyeliner pencil so what I would do is I would measure 10 centimeters from your wrist bones and then I'm just going to mark that on your skin with a little Dot so that I make sure I measuring the same place every time so this is just a way for you to be more accurate with your measurements and then I'm going to measure around your arm at that 10 cm point same thing I don't want to put a lot of tension on my tape measure but just enough that I'm at the resistance level of your skin and then I'm going to come to the crease of your elbow and I'm going to run my tape right through the crease and right over the point of my elbow so I'm getting the whole arm if you don't mind straightening your elbow a little bit more please thank you and then I would get my measurement there and then I want to measure 10 cm up from the bend of your elbow and I'm just going to measure 10 cm from there and make My Little Dot and that's a wipe right off when we're done and then I have my measurements going forward and then that'll be very easy and accurate for you to track over time but that's why it's important to make those marks on your skin so that we get the same measure in the same place every time for the most accurate measurements of the swelling.