• Niger J Clin Pract · Oct 2022

    Clinical awareness and knowledge of breast cancer-related lymphedema among a group of psychiatrists in Turkey - An online survey.

    • Aysegul Yaman, Pinar Borman, Oya Ozdemir, and Mumtaz Mutlu Umaroglu.
    • Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, GulhaneTraining and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey.
    • Niger J Clin Pract. 2022 Oct 1; 25 (10): 1654-1659.

    BackgroundThe point-of-view and role of physiatrists are important in the clinical care of breast-cancer-related-lymphedema (BCRL) patients to set up management and rehabilitation strategies.AimThe aim of this study was to determine the awareness and knowledge of BCRL among a group of physiatrists regarding its causes, symptoms, treatment, and management in Turkey.Subjects And MethodsThe participants were asked to answer a 10-min web survey, including 19 questions. In addition to their demographical and logistic properties, the questionnaire elicited data on the knowledge, education, and awareness of the physiatrists on the diagnosis and treatment of BCRL.ResultsIn total, 127 female and 44 male physiatrists completed the survey. Also, 71% of the participants were aged between 31 and 50 years, mostly working in metropoles and tertiary hospitals for more than 5 years. Further, 63.7% of the participants expressed that they had knowledge about BCRL; however, detailed knowledge of lymphedema treatment was low, as 67.9% of the physiatrists reported that they had no comprehensive information about complete-decongestive-therapy. Nearly half of the participants did not believe that once lymphedema has clinically manifested, a patient can eventually be treated for BCRL. Also, 87% of the participants had attended less than two educational events related to BCRL in the past 5 years. In all, 94.7% of the physicians determined a great need for education and awareness of the current literature about BCRL.ConclusionThe awareness and knowledge of lymphedema is moderate but detailed information, knowledge, and education about lymphedema and its treatment are low among a group of physiatrists. With the growing number of breast cancer survivors, physiatrists' awareness and education about BCRL are crucial to improve the quality of care of patients.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…