![]() ![]() ![]() At the same time I was trying to walk and exercise to get my energy back.” In the morning my throat was so swollen that I couldn’t swallow at all. I felt like I had something stuck in the back of my throat, and this feeling kept waking me up at night. Karni I didn’t think I was progressing well. “I wanted to get the feeding tube out and start to eat as soon as possible so that I could go back to work,” Hatfield says. Karni asked Hatfield to try the Flexitouch when the exercises prescribed by his speech therapist failed to lead to improvement. The device is programmed so that the patient receives compression on the head, neck, and chest as its air chambers open and close. Sevick, Karni, and Gutiérrez have performed lymph-flow studies validating Flexitouch, the first device that allows patients to manage their lymphedema at home by simulating manual lymphatic drainage. Her research has given us an incredible opportunity to impact the lives of our cancer survivors.” “Through our work with Sevick, we’ve elucidated that it’s not just the swelling on the outside of the neck but the swelling of structures inside the throat that leads to the inability to breathe, swallow, and talk, and limits range of motion in the neck. “After treatment with radiation therapy, many of our patients are living with profound lymphedema,” Karni says. Her team’s research is focused on using near-infrared fluorescence imaging to phenotype lymphatic and lymphovascular dysfunction. Those efforts were aided by an ongoing research program led by Eva Sevick, PhD, professor of molecular medicine and Nancy and Rich Kinder Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Disease Research at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine at UTHealth. “When it became clear that he was not getting back to swallowing as quickly as most of our patients, we redoubled our efforts to help him.” By the time he finished treatment in January, he was getting nutrition through a PEG tube,” says Gutiérrez, a consulting physician at TIRR Memorial Hermann and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at McGovern Medical School. Hatfield started chemotherapy and radiation in November 2017. Cancer rehabilitation specialist Carolina Gutiérrez, MD, first saw him in March 2018, in the Head and Neck Cancer Survivorship Clinic, which is specialty otorhinolaryngology service led by Ron Karni, MD, chief of the Division of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. Carey Hatfield, 59, is among the patients to benefit from the researchers’ elucidation of internal lymphedema and the use of the Flexitouch® system, an intermittent pneumatic compression device that allows patients to self-manage the condition.Īfter a diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the left tonsil, Hatfield was not far into radiation and chemotherapy when he lost the ability to speak and swallow. Lymphedema research at UTHealth has led to new knowledge and innovative treatments for head and neck cancer patients after surgery and radiation therapy. Ron Karni, MD, and patient Carey Hatfield (Photo courtesy of ORL Notes) ![]()
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