About 15 percent of diabetes patients develop foot ulcers, nasty little sores that can lead to dangerous infections. In advanced stages of diabetes, this can lead to amputation.
Luckily, some scientists have developed a little gadget that can help prevent you from ever getting to that point.
Diabetic Neuropathy and Ulcers
Diabetes does serious damage to blood vessels. Volatile blood sugar levels break down the lining of blood vessels until they become hardened and less efficient at delivering blood.
This is the first step in the cascade of damaging side effects of the disease. Next, diabetes patients can expect a damaged heart, impaired cognitive functioning, poorer eyesight, and neuropathy.
This is a direct result of poor circulation due to the damaged blood vessels.
Over time, reduced blood flow to the extremities and the feet, in particular, can lead to more serious problems such as ulcers.
The first step in prevention is to avoid damaging the blood vessels. With a diabetes diagnosis, however, this can prove to be difficult. The next step, then, is to catch the ulcers before they break open on the skin surface.
Temperature-Reading SmartMat
A group of scientists at MIT created a device that can catch the majority of foot ulcers before they appear.
The patient stands on the mat for a mere 20 seconds and allows the device to measure temperature differences all over the feet. The software essentially searches for any hotspots, places where the temperature is significantly higher than other areas.
A study published in Diabetes Care reported that the SmartMat was able to detect up to 97% of foot ulcers about five weeks before they ever appeared. The study focused on 129 patients, and the majority of them used the device three times a week to remain vigilant about their condition.
The idea is to have the data from the mat be sent directly to the doctor so that the patient and doctor can work together to eliminate the ulcer before it ever breaks out. The study is so impressive that they are hoping to get this on the market in the coming years!
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