This Monday we have commemorated World Diabetes Day, a chronic disease that affects the way in which the body converts food into energy, that is, the amount of glucose in the blood. It is a pathology that, with a correct diagnosis, treatment and medical follow-up, is usually controlled without problem. However, it is associated with complications, such as diabetic foot, which is very important to prevent and detect in time. Today we are going to dedicate our entry to the health blog to explain what diabetic foot is, how to detect this problem early and why it occurs.
Carlos Perucha, podiatrist specializing in diabetic foot of the University Hospital of Torrejónmanaged by the Ribera health group, explains that, according to the World Health Organizationdiabetic foot syndrome is “ulceration, infection and/or gangrene of the foot associated with diabetic neuropathy and different degrees of peripheral vascular disease (PVD), the result of the interaction of different factors induced by sustained hyperglycemia”.
First symptoms of diabetic foot
Perucha assures that “the most important thing is to have good metabolic control, that is, glucose levels, cholesterol, etc” and insists on the need to be aware of the associated symptoms to detect the disease early. “The problem with diabetes is that it is a pathology that does not cause pain, but little by little it affects organs such as the kidneys, the eyes, the circulation and, of course, the feet”, he explains.
The first symptoms to which we must pay attention, in the case of suffering from diabetes, are:
- Pain in the calf that forces us to stop when walking. It may be a sign of peripheral vascular disease.
- Signs such as tingling, cramps, numbness in the feet. It may be compatible with diabetic neuropathy.
- foot deformity
- Blisters, friction or small injuries that can get complicated in a matter of days.
Diabetic foot complication: amputation
The University Hospital of Torrejón is one of the few public hospitals that has a podiatrist specialized in this pathology derived from diabetes, which affects 25% of patients who suffer from it. “If these ulcers are not treated correctly, most often they become complicated and end in an amputation that, depending on the case, can be minor (affecting only the foot) or major, even losing the leg,” explains Perucha, who provides worrying data. “Spain ranks in data for major amputation in adult patients with diabetes, above other European countries such as France, Great Britain or Italy, since we have a major amputation rate in adults with diabetes of 52 per 100,000 inhabitants,” he says. .
14% of the population in Spain has diabetes, that is, around 6 million people, and both the incidence of type 2 diabetes, the most common (90-95% of cases), and type 1 diabetes, is growing every year. It is estimated that 40% of people with diabetes are unaware of their condition.
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