Abstract: Correlation Between Lymphedema Disease Severity and Lymphoscintigraphic Findings: A Clinical-Radiological Study

INTRODUCTION: Lymphoscintigraphy is the gold-standard test for diagnosing lymphedema, and is 96% sensitive for detecting the disease. The major abnormal lymphoscintigraphic findings on the test include delayed transit time to the inguinal or axillary lymph nodes (>1 hour) and dermal backflow. A universal protocol for the test does not exist, our protocol obtains images at 1, 2, and 4 hour intervals to confirm diagnosis of the disease and to achieve a measure of the severity of lymphatic dysfunction (e.g., a patient with a transit time of 4 hours to regional lymph nodes would have worse dysfunction compared to a patient with a transit time of 2 hours). The purpose of this project was to determine if lymphoscintigraphy results correlate with clinical presentation.