Home volume measure

kira66715

I found this on the Quebec LE site suggested by Nitocris:

http://www.infolympho.ca/en/volumeter.htm

It's detailed instructions for how to make a home volume measure, using PVC pipe. Considering that the latest push for measuring (and attempting to diagnose) LE is bioimpedance, where each set of electodes costs $40 a test, and I recently spoke to Mei Fu PhD who used bioimpedance in her research and she found that in women with LE, the reliability of the measurements--that you could take the same measurement and get the same number, was only 66%.

Recently, due to our concerns about bioimpedance in the Avon White paper, I spoke to the "medical director" for impedimed, and found that he was a very pleasant surgeon who appeared to be related to the technical director of the company and who had a grant to use it in his--not affiliated with any medical school--practice and he really didn't understand the science behind it, but found it useful--and I discussed this with some LE experts, and they all expressed concern.

LE is a disease without a formal diagnostic criteria, and the old 2 cm rule is just used for convenience, there are no studies to show it is a meaningful measurement.

So, I found it interesting that this research method of limb volume measurement was free on the web in Canada, while the Avon White Paper is strongly pushing a very expensive, and somewhat controversial (it says on the L-dex website "not intended for the diagnosis of LE") bioimpedance.

I remember when Mei Fu abandoned bioimpedance as insensitive and unreliable in her research.

Now, I'm not advocating we all become plumbers and make volume displacement units, but we could....

Kira