B10: Chronic Oedema & Lymphoedema

Oedema is easy to dismiss as background ankle swelling. Yet among more than seven thousand people with chronic leg oedema, those whose swelling was well controlled had about half the odds of a leg wound. Swelling stalls healing and feeds infection, and each wound and episode of cellulitis worsens lymphatic drainage in turn. In the diabetic foot, compression is safe only once the blood supply is confirmed adequate.

The module teaches bedside discrimination of oedema, including pitting and the Stemmer sign, and how to identify the dominant cause: venous, lymphatic, cardiac or renal, drug-induced, neuropathic or mixed. It sets out the arterial safety gate, backing up the ABPI with toe pressures or waveforms because calcification makes the ankle unreliable, to decide between full, modified or no compression. It covers decongestive therapy in reduction and maintenance phases, breaking the oedema-cellulitis loop, and the warm swollen foot that is Charcot or infection rather than oedema.

Content is tiered at Foundation, Core and Advanced level, with assessment and decongestion algorithms and case vignettes. You receive the Teaching Document, the Evidence Base, the slide deck, a narrated video and an audio overview.