Infection is a special concern after you’ve had any lymph nodes
removed — whether or not you’ve ever had any symptoms of
lymphedema. This is because of two key roles those lymph nodes
play for the hand, arm, and upper body. 1. Lymph nodes take care
of “foreign invaders” from specific regions of the body and
signal the body to launch an immune response. “I liken the lymph
node to a taxi dispatcher who gets a call from someone at an
address and then says, ‘Hey taxi, go there,’” says Kathryn
Schmitz, PhD, MPH, associate professor in the Division of
Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania. “So
let’s say you have an underarm lymph node or nodes that serve
your hand. You get a cut in your finger and dirt and debris get
into the body. The lymph carries the debris up to the lymph
nodes, which strain the debris out and then tell the immune
system to respond, to stop the infection. So what happens if you
no longer have all of those nodes? A cut that wasn’t a big deal
before has the potential to turn int