Purpose: Secondary lymphedema is a frequent complication of breast cancer associated with surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation following breast cancer treatment. The potential contribution of genetic susceptibility to risk of developing secondary lymphedema following surgical trauma, radiation, and other tissue insults has not been studied.
Experimental Design: To determine whether women with breast cancer and secondary lymphedema had mutations in candidate lymphedema genes, we undertook a case-control study of 188 women diagnosed with breast cancer recruited from the University of Pittsburgh Breast Cancer Program (http://www.