Mastectomy Bra Case Study

7.3.3 Difference of Core Body Temperature between Conventional Mastectomy Bra and Suggested New Mastectomy Bra
The core body temperature approximately remained constant at the beginning of the 15 min sitting and then slightly decreased at approximately 10 min. The core body temperature was continuously increased since moving into walking phase (Figure 7.19).

The results showed the mean Tcore of the conventional mastectomy bra (37.3ºC ~ 38.2ºC) was consistently higher than the mean Tcore of the suggested new mastectomy bra (37.2ºC ~ 38.0 ºC) during all five phases. The mean Tcore differences between the conventional mastectomy bra and the newly designed mastectomy bra ranged from 0.1±0.2 ºC to 0.2±0.5 ºC (p< 0.05) at walking 30 min time point

All sets of clothing had a continuously decreased tendency of the Damp/ Dry sensation at the resting 0 min, resting 15 min and walking 30 min time point (p < 0.05). The Damp/ Dry sensations of Clo A and Clo B sharply decreased at and running 45 min time points, while Clo C and Clo D showed a relatively gradual decrease of that. This may due to the sweat evaporation while wearing different sets of clothing. When the participants began to exercise and sweat, the clothing will become damp and sticky to the skin, which may create higher friction between skin, mastectomy bra and prosthesis, especially on the elastics and the back of the prosthesis. The increased friction would affect participants’ feeling of touch sensations, including Scratchy/ Non – scratchy, Itchy/ Non – itchy and Tight/

This general tendency might be due to the heat-reduction and air ventilation structures of the suggested news. As showed in the core body temperature results, the increased Tcore of the conventional bra is from approximately 16 min, the beginning of the walking phase, while the increased Tcore of the suggested new design mastectomy bra was delayed to approximately 20 min. The suggested new design mastectomy bra also had a smaller increase of Tcore during the experiment, which means the heat-reduction and air ventilation structures had positive effects on reducing the core body