ImpediMed Limited announced publication of a systematic literature review showing that early detection and intervention of breast cancer-related lymphedema reduces rates of chronic lymphedema in breast cancer patients. The analysis also shows that L-Dex(R) testing is the detection method with the most extensive evidence of efficacy. L-Dex testing was also found to be cost effective, reproducible, and practical to implement for patient monitoring. The manuscript, published in Journal of Cancer Survivorship, titled "Reducing rates of chronic breast cancer--related lymphedema with screening and early intervention: an update of recent data" details an analysis of 12 studies including 2,907 breast cancer patients. The systematic data review paper evaluated results from 12 studies including four randomized trials and eight prospective studies. The randomized trials evaluated protocols of screening patients for early lymphedema and then intervening to stop the lymphedema from progressing to chronic disease. These trials consistently show that, regardless of detection method, patients benefit from reduced rates of chronic lymphedema with early detection and intervention. The strongest data comes from the PREVENT trial, which demonstrated that breast cancer patients with early detection using L-Dex and at-home intervention with compression garments resulted in a significantly lower rate of chronic lymphedema compared to using tape measure. The paper also included a comparison of four different methods to monitor breast cancer patients for lymphedema
including tape measurements, survey of symptoms, perometry, and L-Dex. Of the four detection methods, L-Dex was the only one found to be reproducible, sensitive, easy to use, cost effective, and supported by Level 1 randomized data in the PREVENT trial.