Objective
Lymphoedema is a chronic disease with an evolutionary course without a suitable management. For this reason we have decided to analyze the coexistence of lymphoedema with Covid-19 pandemic.
Material-Methods
During the 2020 lockdown there was the complete suspension of the rehabilitative treatment, public and private, and therefore the patients did not have a response to their disease.
In our centre, only the lymphologist examined patients with urgent clinical needs, after a triage call, but the team was always available to provide advice through phone-video calls.
In the post-lockdown, according to the intermittent government restrictions, we started again the rehabilitative treatments (environmental-personal hygiene rules, protective devices, U.V. air filtration, phone triage).
For patients in follow-up, in this Covid-19 pandemic, the vademecum has always talked about self-management that we have always included in the rehabilitative project as a therapeutic education (self-assessment of oedema, skin care, breathing exercises, manual self-drainage, home pressotherapy, self-bandaging, management of the elastic brace, respect of behavioural-rules, correct diet, physical activity).
Results
In the first phase, clinical worsening in patients (26%), was due to psychological distress, family problems and economic concerns that induced less-non attention to self-management previously learned.
Psychological distress for the fear of contagion, still leads some patients to postpone rehabilitative treatment.
Conclusions
During the lockdown there was the suspension of the rehabilitative treatment, but urgent clinical evaluation and phone-video calls really limited the clinical worsening. Following this, we are carrying out the rehabilitative treatment in environmental, team and patient safety.