Title: The role of manual lymph drainage in improving wound healing and accelerating recovery after cosmetic & plastic surgery

Abstract:

Manual Lymph Drainage utilised in the acute postoperative period removes ‘stagnant’ oedema, supporting the function of the lymphatic system, supporting, and improving wound healing and optimizing the scarring process, and accelerates the healing process. Any cut, incision and wound that breaches the skin and underlying tissues will produce some degree of scar. No matter how it occurs, scar formation is the body's natural reaction to that trauma. The ‘replacement’ tissue is quite different to the original ‘normal’ tissue. If the wound healing process is faulty or mismanaged, the scar tissue can cause tightness and restriction causing pain and discomfort. And be unsightly causing distress and dissatisfaction in the patient.

Biography:

Petra Erving is a Certified Lymphoedema Therapist and Scar Tissue Release Therapist based in Northern Ireland. She has worked with post Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery patients since first completing training in Postoperative and Post-Trauma Massage through the Centre for Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and the School of Orthopedic Massage, Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2006. She has worked in the NHS in two of London’s leading teaching hospital: St George’s Hospital and Ealing Hospital in their lymphoedema departments where she treated both primary and secondary to cancer lymphoedema. In 2012 she introduced Manual Lymph Drainage to London Bridge Plastic Surgery in Wimpole Street, London where pre & postop MLD was integrated into the surgical fees and became the first private plastic surgery in London to offer this service on-site to all surgical patients.