Flipping The Top Of A Compression Garment (See right image)
Another thing that makes sense (to us at least) is not to flip the top of the shrinker. It is a compression garment and unfortunately we see people flip the top of them from time to time. The reason why we think this can happen to the shrinker, is many fold.
- The garment can be stretched out over time. Daily applications happen and as a result it just has some level of wear and tear.
- The shrinker may not have been washed and the garment if worn routinely gets worn out since it has been subjected to a prolonged stretch. As a result, people can stretch it out much more than they could at first when applying the shrinker. So, once they stretch it out physically in their application of the garment, the length can be annoying when this happens so they flip the top of the garment.
In our experience, usually nothing really bad happens if you flip the garment. People do not necessarily keel over and die, but it is arguably very bad for you. I realize that this is not a safe statement to make. But, that is a far cry from saying we recommend this procedure though. It is probably better to say that amputees do not report the problem to us, if they do encounter an issue. Probably, because they know we do not recommend flipping the top of the garment. That’s the take home point here. Unless your prosthetist tells you to flip the garment, really consider not doing that.
Why? You might be asking….
We present the issue like this to amputees we work with : These garments have a strength and a size. The strength of the shrinker is described in a range of pressure. You are already aware of sizing from before, but we have not covered any strength from the garment yet with you.
This pressure, or strength is defined with the term : mmHg, otherwise known as millimeters of mercury.
No. There is no mercury in your garment.
Otherwise the manufacturer would probably be in jail long before you ever were presented with a shrinker. It is only a term used to describe the strength of the compression you are getting in the garment. Compression stockings and shrinkers tend to have this form of pressure measurement.
It is probably best to describe this idea with the ideas below :
As we stated earlier, the strength of this garment is offered in a range usually that is defined by mmHg. Often times you will hear people use the term “20-30” and what they are saying is that the particular shrinker has a strength of 20-30 mmHg. The stronger number here is : 30, the lesser number being 20. The point here is that the garment is trying to help you by flushing out swelling (edema) and it is stronger at the bottom than it is at the top to get edema moving in an upward direction. Fair enough?
As mentioned earlier, the stronger number in this instance is at the bottom of the garment (30) (If you are a student of the book, you might have said to yourself “the bottom is also referred to as the distal end” and, if so, thumbs up to you) and the less compressive number (20) is at the top of the garment (superior border) of the garment.
Ok, so the point here is that if a person flips the superior border of the shrinker (the top section) one could argue that the 20 compression that normally exists there has now increased. Right? Hopefully it has not doubled to 40, but I think that you now see the point. Just imagine edema trying to escape that has to go uphill past 40, from a 30, or if fluid coming into the leg now has to fight harder to get into the residual limb? That is our reasoning as to why people should not flip compression garments like this and we hope that makes some sense to you. In this instance the physician for example may have ordered a compression garment that is 20-30, not otherwise if the garment is changed.
