Is there help for chronic lymphedema after breast cancer?

If you have had lymph nodes under your arm removed as part of treatment for breast cancer, you may experience a very common side effect -- chronic swelling and pain in the arm next to the affected breast, known as lymphedema. While many women obtain relief through intense physical therapy or lymphatic massage, there are some cases that stubbornly resist all types of traditional non-surgical treatment.

A relatively new surgical treatment, known as autologous vascularized lymph node transfer, has made its way from France, where it was pioneered, to the United States, where it is performed by a select group of microsurgeons -- the same surgeons that perform DIEP flap reconstruction and other microsurgical reconstruction procedures. This is because lymph node transfer involves some of the same techniques -- healthily lymph nodes are harvested from a woman's lower abdomen and are re-implanted in the affected area, where they are re-attached to tiny blood vessels, with the hope that they will thrive there and take over the job of filtering and draining the lymphatic system in the arm.

An article appearing last summer in the New York Times gives an intersesting overview of lymph node transfer; two of the surgeons mentioned in the article, Dr. Constance Chen and Dr. Joshua Levine, are colleagues of Dr. Redstone, with whom he operates frequently.

For questions about lymph node transfer, DIEP flap surgery, or other reconstructive procedures, please call Dr. Redstone's offices at 212.249.1500 (New York) or 973.867.8388 (New Jersey).