OBJECTIVE: Demonstrate the effectiveness of complex decongestive therapy (CDT) in patients with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). METHODS: Asingle-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted, where he participants were subjects with CVI (n = 21/42) that were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 11/22) or control group (n = 9/18). A treatment of CDT (manual lymphatic drainage (MDL), intermittent pneumatic presotherapy (IPP), bilayer bandage (BB)) was applied to the experimental group for 4 weeks two days per week and no treatment was applied to the control group. The patients were evaluated at baseline (t0), 1 week after finishing the intervention (t1) and 6 weeks after the intervention (t2). The effectiveness of the treatment on symptoms and QoL (haviness, pain and CIVIQ-20 questionary), edema, venous flow (VF) and impedanciometry measurements was evaluated. RESULTS: An improvement in the patient's QoL was observed: there was a decrease in symptoms such as heaviness and pain, an increase in the average velocity of the left femoral vein (LFV) and left internal saphenous vein (LISV), a decrease in the internal saphenous vein diameter (ISVD) in both extremities and a decrease in body mass index and fat mass (FM) in both extremities. These results were maintained when following up at 6 weeks, except for the improvement of QoL. CONCLUSION: CDT treatment improves the QoL of patients with CVI (CIVIQ-20, VCSS). It also improves symptoms (pain and heaviness), VF velocity (superficial veins (ISV) and deep veins (common femoral vein (CFV), femoral vein (FV), popliteal vein (PV)) and decreases body mass index (BMI), fat mass (FM) and ISVD.

Full text (sometimes free) may be available at these link(s):      help

• PubMed Central
• DOI
• PubMed
• PDF locator
• publisher