Effects of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching and deep-breathing exercises on upper extremity lymphedema in stroke patients.
Woon Taek Hwang, Yeon-Jae Jeong, Seong-Yeol Kim and 1 others
PMID 28174433WHAT IT FOUND
Ten stroke patients with arm swelling performed deep-breathing and stretching exercises for four weeks.
Body water volume in both arms decreased significantly, but the study lacked a control group, so the exercises cannot be proven as the cause.
Key findings
01Ten patients with post-stroke upper extremity lymphedema performed deep breathing and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretching exercises three times per week for four weeks.
02Body water volume in both the affected and unaffected upper extremities was significantly reduced after the intervention.
03The study was a pilot without a control group, meaning the reduction in swelling cannot be definitively attributed to the exercises alone.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study was a pilot with no control group, so natural recovery or concurrent neurodevelopmental treatment cannot be ruled out as the cause of the improvement. The sample size was very small (10 patients), and the general characteristics table inconsistently reports n=7. The rehabilitation period was only four weeks, which is too short to determine long-term effects. The correlation between exercise performance and edema reduction was imprecise.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the deep-breathing and stretching exercises caused the reduction in lymphedema. The patients also received neurodevelopmental treatment, and the study had no control group, so the effect of the exercises alone cannot be separated from standard care or natural recovery.