AIM:

The aim of this study is to determine the eff ect of the arm exercises on prevention of arm edema after modifi ed radical mastectomy.

MATERIALS AND METHOD:

28 modifi ed radical mastectomy operated patients who accepted to participate in the research after being explained about the research. in the General Surgery departments of Adnan Menderes University Research and Application Hospital and Aydın State Hospital between February 2001- May 2002 were taken as research sample. The patients were divided into experiment (14) and control groups(14). While the arm exercises were taught to the patients in the experiment group, no exercises were taught to the patients in the control group. The arm measurements of the patients in both groups (in the experiment and control group) before and after the operation were compared with each other. In the evaluation of the data; while the percentage calculation was used for feature ratings for patient, the Friedman variance analysis, and Mann Whitney-U test were used for the arm measurements.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:

It has been found that the socio- demographic features of the patients in both groups are similar and in the early post- operation period the diff erence of the arm diameter in the experiment group patients applied arm exercises is signifi cantly very little in comparison with that of patients in the control group not applied any arm exercises. The diff erence between the groups was not found important.

Keywords: Breast cancer, mastectomy, arm edema, arm exercises