A 14 year old girl attends your clinic with primary lymphoedema in her right leg and foot. She has chronic swelling of her lower legs and feet. Outline your treatment of this patient using therapeutic massage techniques, supporting your treatment rationale/management with evidence from the literature. The patient in question is 14 years old with primary lymphodema of her right leg. She presents in the clinic with chronic swelling of her lower legs and feet. Judging from this it is most likely that the patient is suffering from Meige Disease. Meige Disease is described as a Primary Lympheodema of the lower limbs. There is a number of different ways of treating a condition such as this. Treatments include Manual Lymph drainage, compression therapy and sometimes surgery. Pharmaclogy is often used as an addition to these treatments through the use of enzymatic products, benzopyrones and diuretics (Nadeˇžda et al,2012). Each treatment has both pros and cons. For the purpose of this essay I will talk about the effectivness of massage techniques in the treatment of Primary Lymphodema. The main way of treating Lymphodeam as a massage therapists is through Manual lymph Drainage (MLD). The technique of Manual Lymph Drainage was initially founded by Emil Vodder and his wife Estrid in Cannes Frances, in the 1930s(Wojak et al,2010). The principal behind Manual Lymph Drainage is to free up the lymphatic system through stimulation of the vessels and nodes in the body. Unfortunately there is no cure for Lymphedema, therefore treatment is based on reducing swelling, improving functionality if the affected body part, trying to prevent any complications which can occur due to lymphedema and improving the patients quality of life. Of course li... ... middle of paper ... ...sing. 1 (2), 18-24. Börcsök E, Földi K, Wittlinger G, Földi M (1971) Zur therapeutischen Beeinflussung des akuten experimentellen lymphostatischen Ödems mit Vitaminen, vitaminartigen Naturstoffen sowie mittels Massage. Angiologica 8: 31–42 Devoogdt N, Van Kampen M, Geraerts I, Coremans T, Christiaens MR. Different physical treatment modalities for lymphoedema developing after axillary lymph node dissection for breast cancer: a review. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol 2010: 149: 3–9. Nadeˇžda Vojácˇková, Jorga Fialová & Jana Hercogová. (2012). Management of lymphedema. Dermatalogical Therapy. 25 (1), 352–357. Siobhan O’Reilly Bracken (2014). Manual Lymph Drainage, lecture notes distributed in topic PHY20110. UCD, Dublin on Feb 2nd 2014. TERRI A. WOJAK. (2010). The Medical Value Of Manual Lymph Drainage.Available: www.SkinInc.com. Last accessed 12/04/2014.