How is angiogenesis treating diabetic patients with chronic wounds?
Injuries to the feet and legs of those with diabetes can be a problem, as they don’t always heal. Angiogenesis expert William Li, MD explains how angiogenesis can help diabetics with chronic injuries, who may otherwise need amputations.
Transcript
In the situation of diabetes one of the biggest problems is that wounds that occur
in the feet and legs of people who have diabetes don't heal. That's a problem where there's not enough angiogenesis,
insufficient angiogenesis. Now if you've ever fallen off a bike or scraped your knee, you'll know that a scab rapidly forms over a wound.
And if your scab comes off too early you see this bright red bubbling stuff underneath. Well, that's angiogenesis, that's your body's natural response to injury.
The wound heals by having blood vessels bring oxygen and nutrients to repair that tissue. In diabetes, this doesn't happen normally.
And it happens not fast enough. And in fact, sometimes it doesn't happen at all. And so these wounds that don't heal become infected.
And an infected wound can affect your muscles, can even infect your bone. And more often than not at least prior
to the advent of angiogenesis stimulating treatments, that lead to amputation.
Amputation due to a chronic wound is a big price to pay for not being able to have enough blood vessels to heal that wound, the stuff that
happens under a scab. And so one of the amazing things that's happened in our field it's a development of not one
but more than a dozen new treatments, including drugs, and devices, and other manipulations
that can actually stimulate and angiogenesis, grow blood vessels to heal those wounds. In fact, we can zip wound shut now
by applying a treatment in the medical clinic to help a diabetic heal their wounds faster.
diabetes
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