EFFICACY OF COMPLEX DECONGESTIVE THERAPY ON VENOUS FLOW, INTERNAL SAPHENOUS DIAMETER, EDEMA, FAT MASS OF THE LIMBS AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC VENOUS INSUFFICIENCY: A RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL.

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.