Be Cautious of Diabetic Foot Complications

Middle-aged and elderly people often complain that their legs and feet are less and less sharp, especially to the retirement age, is ready to enjoy a new life, mountains and rivers, only to find that their walking is not as good as before, always easy to sit down, leg pain, walk a few steps to rest, out of the house to throw garbage, legs feel tired, not to mention climbing or hiking. And this phenomenon, but often by the side of friends and relatives a “old man first old legs” to dismiss, think that ordinary people as long as they get old, the legs and feet naturally not sharp, this is just a normal aging phenomenon. But that’s not the case.

More than 50 years old, just after the age of knowing the destiny of heaven, walk one hundred or two hundred meters can not walk, at the same time, high blood pressure, high blood fat, high blood sugar, encounter this situation, do not take lightly, do not take seriously. Many of the so-called “old legs first” phenomenon, in fact, is caused by diseases, especially those “people are not old, legs first” examples. I’m here to warn the public about a disease that many people have probably never heard of. It’s called diabetic foot.

We must be familiar with diabetes, but what is diabetic foot? Generally speaking, high blood sugar occurs due to diabetes, which damages the blood vessels and nerves on the legs, leading to vascular blockage and nerve dysfunction, causing numbness and cold feet and inability to walk, and severe toe pain, inability to walk, black toes, ulceration and necrosis. If not treated in time, there will be very serious consequences, waiting for patients may only amputation. This is not alarmist. Studies show that the annual incidence of diabetic foot is 8.1%, the annual mortality rate is 14.4%, and the rate of amputation is 19.3%. It can be a disability in one’s legs or feet, or a permanent disability.

Don’t know you have diabetes? There are a lot of people here

What kind of person is susceptible to such a terrible disease? Diabetic foot, as the name implies, has to have diabetes in the first place. From our outpatient experience, many patients with diabetic foot have been coming to the outpatient clinic to see a doctor, but they do not know they have diabetes. When it is time to check and test, they find that their blood sugar is elevated! These patients do not have physical examinations or blood sugar tests.

Therefore, it is very important for people in middle age to have regular medical check-ups. If blood vessels have been secretly eroded by high blood sugar for many years, diabetic foot is especially prone to develop. And those who are usually greedy, unwilling to move, and unwilling to regularly test blood sugar of the elderly diabetic patients, it is more prone to diabetic foot. Long-term high blood sugar can seriously damage blood vessels throughout the body, occurring in the legs, will cause intima hyperplasia, calcification, resulting in stenosis and occlusion.

What are the common manifestations of such a terrible disease? In fact, the core of the common manifestations of diabetic foot is the ability to walk. At the beginning, patients who are still in diabetic prefoot may just be unable to walk, or have leg pain after walking a few steps, and gradually develop to pain without walking, and eventually appear local skin ulceration and necrosis. The onset of diabetic foot is insidious. In the very early stage, you may only feel cold and numbness in your feet and have no strength to walk. Gradually, it will become more and more difficult to walk. If you let it go, by the time you can’t even walk, the disease has entered a more serious state.

Diabetic foot causes blood vessels in the legs to be completely blocked, and once a wound is formed on the foot, it will not heal for a long time, or even worse. If there is no active treatment at this point, amputation is likely to be the only option.

How to prevent a bad outcome? Remember three things

Whether diabetic prefoot, or diagnosed diabetic foot patients, all need drug treatment. And for drug treatment has little effect, or the disease has been very serious, drugs alone can not achieve a good effect of patients, the need for active surgical treatment.

At present, there are a lot of minimally invasive vascular treatment means. A variety of minimally invasive instruments, such as guide wire, balloon and stent, have been enough to open up the blocked blood vessels, and it is no longer only the age of surgical bypass. However, the blood vessels of diabetic foot patients are always a big challenge for vascular surgeons. They are often dilated and in disrepair. A 50-year-old has a 70-year-old blood vessel, which is full of hyperplastic lining and calcified plaques. Block again.

Fortunately, medical technology is changing rapidly, and now we can shoot an excimer laser into the stone-hard calcified plaque in the blood vessels, shattering the plaque. Re-occlusion after vascular opening can also be solved by drug-carrying stents. Stents coated with special drugs can slowly release drugs at the site of severe lesions for as long as one year to achieve the effect of inhibiting endometrial hyperplasia and avoid re-occlusion as far as possible.

However, if the treatment, the foot has a large area of black necrosis, even if there is a sophisticated technology, there is nothing to do, only the regrettable choice of amputation. Therefore, diabetic foot this disease, the same emphasis on prevention.

The prevention of diabetic foot is simple and simple. There are three main points: blood sugar control, balanced diet and appropriate exercise.

Patients with diabetes should test their blood sugar regularly under the guidance of professional endocrinologists and regularly use hypoglycemic drugs according to the doctor’s advice. A well-balanced diet is also essential for controlling blood sugar while satisfying the body’s needs for various nutrients. Diets high in fat and sugar need to be avoided, but protein, vitamins, dietary fiber and a certain amount of carbohydrate and fat intake are still very necessary. Finally, to the extent permitted by physical conditions, appropriate exercise can consume excess energy, so as to reduce blood sugar while promoting blood circulation and effectively maintain blood vessel health, which can kill two birds with one stone.

Therefore, if diabetic patients find that their legs and feet are not sharp one day, do not think that it is just because of their old age, this may be vascular health in the alarm, to be vigilant about diabetic foot, similar phenomenon, must be timely medical treatment, so as not to delay treatment.