Interventional Therapy – New Hope for Diabetic Foot Rehabilitation

  The diabetic foot is one of the most headache complications for diabetic patients, with untreated ulcers, unbearable pain in the lower limbs, and even the need for amputation, and interventional therapy may become the “savior” for diabetic foot patients.  More than 70 years old Yan old man suffering from diabetes for more than a decade, a while ago often felt cold, pain and numbness in the left foot. Then a soy-sized ulcer appeared on the back lateral edge of the little toe, and within a few days it expanded to the size of a coin. The old man’s heart thumped and he rushed to the hospital for a checkup, and as expected, it was a diabetic foot. Despite trying various medications, the ulcer on Yan’s foot showed no signs of healing, but was getting bigger and bigger, and the pain was tormenting him at times. The doctor did an ultrasound of the lower limb arteries and found that one artery was blocked. A stent was implanted.  After the surgery, he found that his leg didn’t hurt at all. After a period of medication, the ulcer on his foot gradually healed. He was relieved to have saved his leg.  Diabetic foot can be disabling and fatal Diabetic foot is one of the common complications of diabetes. Dr. Liu Yujin, director of the interventional department of Yueyang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine affiliated with Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that diabetic foot can cause foot pain, numbness, skin ulcers, toe necrosis, etc., due to long-term hyperglycemia, the lower extremity macrovascular and microvascular lesions make the arterial blood flow perfusion is insufficient, resulting in microcirculatory disorders and ulcers and gangrene and other lesions.  Diabetic foot skin ulcers are a kind of intractable complication. Due to microcirculatory disorders, local tissues are not nourished, and ulcers often remain untreated for a long time, and severe infections may cause sepsis, which is one of the important causes of disability and even death in diabetic patients.  Interventional treatment makes recovery possible Clinical examination found that some diabetic foot patients have ulcers that do not heal for a long time because diabetes has led to atherosclerosis, narrowing or even blocking the arteries in the lower limbs, making it difficult for blood to supply to the lesion site and lacking “nutrition”, so the new tissue cannot grow up. In view of this finding, if the blocked blood vessels can be unblocked, the problem will be solved.  Interventional treatment, based on angiography, can effectively and quickly restore blood flow to the foot, relieve pain, and promote ulcer healing through balloon dilation and stent implantation.  Patients with diabetic foot should pay attention to lower limb vascular examination in order to detect problems in time and take effective and targeted treatment methods early.