COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN MOBILE INFRARED OPTOELECTRONIC VOLUMETRY WITH A PEROMETER® AND TWO COMMONLY USED METHODS FOR THE EVALUATION OF ARM VOLUME IN PATIENTS WITH BREAST CANCER RELATED LYMPHEDEMA OF THE ARM

Abstract

There is no consensus on the definitionof Breast Cancer Related Lymphedema of thearm (BCRL) because there are no agreedstandards in measurement methods anddiagnostic criteria. The main objective of thisstudy is to compare mobile infraredoptoelectronic volumetry with a Perometer®with two commonly used methods for theevaluation of arm volume in patients withdifferent degrees of BCRL. Bilateral armvolumes of eighty participants, with andwithout clinical BCRL, were calculated with amobile Perometer®, by water displacement,and with circumferential measurements,integrated in the frustrum, single frustrum,and disc model method. The ICC of thePerometer® was between 0.997 and 0.999.The frustrum and disc model method producedthe largest volume measurements and waterdisplacement the smallest, while Perometer®measures were in between. On average,volume of the dominant arm was found to be2.2% higher than the non-dominant arm inthe healthy control group, cautioning forintra- patient differences between both armswhen comparing ipsilateral to contralateralarm for the diagnosis of BCRL with athreshold value. Future research would likelybenefit from the use of the Perometer®compared to the other arm volume evaluationtools for BCRL, and further, the singlefrustrum method should not be used forvolume estimations of edematous arms.