What kind of gloves should LMTs wear to protect themselves when working with chemotherapy patients?
Therapists need to wear gloves that sufficiently protect them from the chemical substances of the chemotherapy that may be excreted by the skin, yet still enable them to retain as much tactile sensitivity for the treatment as possible. They should avoid latex as much as possible, due to the fairly high incidence of latex allergy, and use vinyl gloves or an alternative. The therapist can always ask the client if he/she has a known allergy to latex or substances containing other “exotic” proteins known to contribute to latex sensitivity, such as bananas, mangoes, avocados, kiwi, papaya, peaches, chestnuts, and stone fruits such as cherries and plums. (People with these allergies run a ten-fold risk of developing latex sensitivity.) With Lymph Drainage Therapy you do not apply oils during treatment, so the question of the higher porosity of medical gloves with applications of oil is not pertinent.
