Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Diabetic retinopathy and lower limbs and heart muscle perfusion disturbances are important complications in diabetes. Early recognition of diabetic retinopathy and acroangiopathic disturbances reduce the complications frequency.

Aim: Correlation of lower limbs and heart muscle perfusion disturbances and diabetic retinopathy progression level in patients with diabetes 2. The assessment to what extend diabetic retinopathy progression level may be a direction for diagnostics of lower limbs and heart muscle perfusion disturbances.

Material: One hundred patients with diabetes 2 and retinopathy divided into three groups: PHL – diabetic angiopathy (34 patients); SIM – simple retinopathy (33 patients); PRO – prolixpherating retinopathy (33 patients).

Methods: Full range of ophthalmological examinations: indirect ophthalmoscopy, color photography, fluorescent angiography. The assessment, at rest and after exercise, of heart muscle perfusion with SPECT technique (including SDS – summary defect score) and lower limbs muscles with perfusion scintigraphy. The examinations were performed with gamma-camera with the own programs after application of radiopharmaceutic Tc^99mMIBI.

Results: Deterioration of lower limbs muscle perfusion after exercise: PHL – 42%; SIM – 60%; PRO – 93%. Deterioration of heart muscle perfusion and SDS after exercise: PHL – 3%; SIM – 14%; PRO – 25%.

Conclusions: A dependency between lower limbs and heart muscle perfusion disturbances and diabetic retinopathy progression was stated. The level of diabetic retinopathy is the exponent for macroangiopathic disturbances and correlates with the changes of heart and lower limbs muscles. Statistic analysis of heart muscle perfusion showed an important dependency on the level of progression of eyegrounds changes. The patients with advanced diabetic retinopathy should undergo the assessment of lower limbs and heart muscle perfusion disturbances despite the lack of subjective complaints.