Assessing task "burden" of daily activities requiring upper body function among women following breast cancer treatment.

Goals Of Work: To determine which individual or groups of "upper-body" daily tasks are considered most burdensome to women following breast cancer treatment, and to assess whether certain patient or treatment characteristics influence task burden.

Patients And Methods: A convenience sample of breast cancer survivors (n =619) completed a self-administered questionnaire regarding 48 daily tasks requiring upper-body function. Women were asked to rate how frequent and physically demanding each task was using a five-point Likert scale, and the product of task frequency and physical demand determined overall task burden.

A new technique for the quantification of peripheral edema with application in both unilateral and bilateral cases.

Current noninvasive techniques for the routine and frequent quantification of peripheral lymphedema in patients are total limb volume measurement (by water immersion or by circumferential measurements) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA). However both of these techniques require standardizing the measurement using a contralateral measurement from the unaffected limb. Hence these techniques are essentially restricted to unilateral lymphedema.