Capillaroscopy, the only method available for the study of the microcirculation, without modifying its hydraulics, often provides a wealth of information in certain systemic diseases in which the microcirculatory involvement precedes clinical manifestations and of course, macrovascular complications. The prospective study of a healthy population is particularly demonstrative and the authors proposed scores on which diabetic microangiopathy could be suspected. The latter was confirmed by detailed laboratory investigations on one hand, and by the course of the disease on the other.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcchymotic patches on the fingers and vascular purpura in Gardner-Diamond syndrome are two benign but recurrent clinical disorders occurring chiefly in young women. They involve superficial cutaneous hemorrhagic signs. Both disorders testify to microvascular fragility without perturbation of general hemostasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe treatment of angiolopathies is rather difficult, at this time, at least concerning functional angiopathies. It is a fact that protection against cold represents, in all angilopathies, one of the main elements of the treatment besides medications which are essentially vasoactive drugs, myorelaxants or alpha-blockers, and possibly venous tonics. Fluorescein or Sodium fluoresceinate at 5%, administered in slow intra-venous injections, represents one of the best treatment of acrocyanosis, in combination with vitamins A and D, given at the beginning of fall.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFApart from physiological flushes represented by emotional or prudish blushing, post-prandial flushes and menopausal hot flushes, various pathologic flushes exist of various etiologies: endocrine, dysmetabolic, histaminic and iatrogenic. Their pathogenicity is based mainly on local metabolites secretion provoking vasodilatation of the intermediary microcirculation rather than of the terminal microcirculation. Treatment is a function of etiology and therefore of the patient's history and results of clinical examination, functional exploration and standard biologic tests.
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