Arthur Rank Hospice Charity poster goes on display at annual British Lymphology Society Conference!

Tracy Hancock is a Clinical Specialist (Lymphoedema) in our very busy Lymphoedema clinic. Her team of five clinicians (whose hours add up to two full time staff) and one administrator have more than 380 patients on their caseload.  These are outpatients who may receive phone support, supply of hosiery and self-massage equipment and/or treatments in the Bradbury Wellness Centre. The team recently displayed a poster they had designed in conjunction with the CPFT Tissue Viabilty Team at the British Lymphology Society’s (BLS) Conference, which took place between Sunday 6 and Tuesday 8 October. The BLS is the professional body for lymphoedema and this annual event gives professionals in the field a chance to network and learn about the latest advances in lymphoedema management. The poster focused on the Chronic Oedema / Wet Leg work Sue Rossitter (also a Lymphoedema Clinical Specialist at Arthur Rank Hospice) had been doing in collaboration with Sally-Anne Bradford (Clinical Manager Tissue Viability, at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust) over the last couple of years.  It received a lot of interest at the conference, alongside another poster submitted by our band 5 nurse Natasha Boyden in the novice catagory, which she did as part of her lymphoedema work at St John’s Hospice in Bedford, where she also works.Tracy adds: “On Sunday afternoon, I attended a lecture about moisture meters. This is a new piece of equipment that we are lucky enough to have in the lymphoedema clinic. It is a small handheld device, which via microwaves can detect the percentage water content within the tissues to 2.5mm depth. As you can imagine, this is a great adjunct to the humble tape measure! We can now use this to detect oedema particularly in areas that are difficult to measure for example head, neck, breast or truncal oedema. We can also use the moisture meter post treatment to monitor how effective our treatments are – so we now have a way to benchmark our outcomes. There were also lots of tips about using and being accurate with the machine. Highlights on Monday were lectures on managing oedema in the palliative patient, and a lecture linking the relationship between fluid, fat and inflammation.  My favourite was this second one, which was about the relationship between fluid, fat and inflammation. It is now thought that these are linked, and that future treatments may need to involve all these systems; lots of research is going on about this and I think this is the future!  I will now be disseminating everything I learnt to the team at Arthur Rank Hospice Charity and of course presenting the latest advances to our support group.” To find out more about Lymphoedema, and the support and treatment we provide for it at through the Hospice’s outpatient clinics, please visit arhc.org.uk/lymphoedema-service.asp.  Any lymphoedema patient can attend the support group, once referred for treatment to the Hospice from your nurse, doctor or GP Surgery. The next meeting will be on Wednesday 20 November at 5.30pm-6.30pm: if you would like to attend please let Carla Farley (Administrator for the Lymphoedema team) know on 01223 675765 or email carla.farley@arhc.org.uk