Lymphedema, known as elephant disease among the people, is one of the diseases whose cause is not known exactly, and which has attracted attention with the increase in awareness in recent years.
Lymphedema is a lymphatic circulation disorder that manifests itself with swelling, which can usually be seen in one of the arms or legs, sometimes in both. This disease spoils the aesthetic appearance of the body and negatively affects daily life. As a result of this, we see that elephantiasis patients are affected very seriously in social, physiological and psychological terms and patients cannot continue their daily lives.
For this reason, the treatment process should be started immediately from the moment the disease is diagnosed.
Lymphedema disease is classified as 1,2,3 and 4 stages. In stage 1 and stage 2, patients are generally supported by compression and massage therapy in the physical therapy department and the patient is followed up. Since this disease is a progressive disease, it is very important for the control of the disease to be followed up in the following years and to perform the operation at the stage 3 level. Delaying treatment paves the way for the development of more serious complications in patients.
How We Treat Lymphedema
As Karaaltın Clinic, after seeing that the daily life of patients with advanced lymphedema has become almost impossible due to the inadequacy in their treatment, we spent some overtime on this issue and modified the only level lymph node transplantation that is currently being performed in the world.
With this modification, the following changes were made in the procedure of lymph node transplant surgery:
1-As a first and only in the world, 3-level lymph node transplantation, which can be performed in a single session, was performed by Karaaltın Clinic.
2-In the same session, we added the first and only technique of imaging lymph vessels with an ICG camera, which is the first and only in the world.
By performing the lymphatic vessel repairs and lymphatic shunt surgery as a hybrid in a single session, he succeeded in almost completely eliminating the negative effects of this disease on patients.
While this surgery provides 50-60% success in the treatment of patients according to the stage of the disease, its main success is stopping the progression of this disease. As ‘Karaaltin Clinic’, we are very proud to say that this surgery gives very good results, especially in scrotal lymphedema.
