Determining the Choice of Outcome Measures for RCTs Focused on the Usual Treatment of Lymphedema

The outcome measure (OM) selected by an investigator is critical to determining whether an intervention is clinically effective. Currently, there is no consensus on the best OM for assessing the usual treatment of lymphedema (LED), whether that be observer-assessed or by patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Given this lack of concordance, we set out to describe the current landscape by performing a systematic review of the OMs of current randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for treatment of LED by two of the most common treatment interventions for LED: manual lymphatic drainage (MLD) and intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC).