Dropsy On The Leg - What To Do? Causes And Treatment

2024 Author: Josephine Shorter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-07 17:49

Dropsy on the leg - what to do?

This term hides a symptom of various diseases, which is expressed in the excessive accumulation of fluid in the tissues of the lower extremities. Seeing a doctor with dropsy of the legs is a reason for examining the cardiovascular and urinary system. Dropsy of the legs can be narrowly localized only in the extremities or is part of an imbalance in the water balance of the whole organism.

Content:

• How does dropsy of the legs occur?
• Causes of severe edema
• Causes of edema in combination with pain syndrome
• Dropsy of the legs in pregnant women
• Treatment of dropsy of the legs

How does dropsy of the legs occur?

Dropsy, or edema, is caused by an imbalance between the flow of fluid into the tissues of the legs and their excretion through the venous network or through the lymphatic system. Another cause of dropsy is the increased permeability of blood vessels, their pathological dilation, and, as a result, increased water release into the surrounding tissues.

Violation of the osmotic properties of blood is a reason for the appearance of edema of the lower extremities. Violation of blood biochemistry, a decrease in the concentration of sodium, chlorides and proteins, a decrease in the amount of hormones that regulate metabolism, lead to a disorder of the draining function of the lymphatic and venous systems.

Dropsy is not a separate disease, on the contrary, functional disorders of the cardiovascular system, liver and kidneys are manifested by edema of the legs.

Causes of severe edema

Most often, such edema appears when the circulation of lymph and venous blood is disturbed. The outflow of interstitial fluid is disturbed in cardiovascular pathologies, diseases of the urinary system, and intoxication.

Causes of dropsy:

• Diseases of the lymphatic system of the lower extremities - filariasis, idiopathic elephantiasis. These pathologies stimulate the accumulation of interstitial fluid and problems with its excretion.
• Chronic heart failure is a violation of blood pumping and its stagnation.
• Thrombophlebitis, clogging of the lumen of the veins by a thrombus.
• Violation of water-salt metabolism in pathologies of the thyroid gland (hypothyroidism).
• Violation of the osmotic properties of blood, changes in its biochemical parameters due to liver pathologies, starvation, gastrointestinal diseases, nephrotic symptom.
• Venous insufficiency causes stagnation of blood in the vessels of the legs. The constant flow of arterial blood and disturbances in the outflow of interstitial fluid provoke the appearance of severe edema.
• Nephrotic syndrome - glomerulonephritis, amyloidosis, pyelonephritis contribute to excessive excretion of protein from the body through the kidneys. Vessels cannot retain water, their walls acquire increased permeability, so the liquid fraction of blood penetrates into the surrounding tissues and accumulates in them, causing dropsy.

• Intoxication - the ingestion of toxins from drugs, pesticides, radioactive substances, heavy metal salts, poisonous gases into the body provoke damage to organs that regulate blood circulation and blood composition (heart, brain, liver, kidneys).
• Arthritis of the knee joints - inflammation of the knee, ankle joints of the legs due to injuries, infections, allergies, tumor and autoimmune factors cause severe swelling.

Causes of edema in combination with pain syndrome

Violation of the outflow of lymph and venous blood in combination with soreness usually provokes an inflammatory process. Swelling caused by inflammation occurs when there is bacterial infection and trauma to the limbs.

Causes of dropsy, accompanied by pain:

• Filariasis - cause inflammation of the lymphatic vessels and lymphostasis.
• Lower vein thrombosis - a violation of the withdrawal of toxic metabolic products provokes their effect on the nerve endings. Metabolites cause inflammation, tissue swelling and soreness.
• Myositis - with inflammation of the muscles of the lower extremities, the nerve endings that innervate them are damaged. Muscles become inflamed and increase in size and swell.
• Lymphangitis - stagnation of lymph in inflamed vessels irritates the nerve endings, because the swollen tissues cause mechanical compression of the nerves.
• Fatty edema - the proliferation of adipose tissue provokes recurrent inflammation in the subcutaneous tissue, the appearance of pain.
• Mechanical damage to the limbs - trauma contributes to the damage to the structure and functionality of blood vessels, nerves, skin, muscles of the leg bones, which causes an inflammatory process in these tissues. Pain and swelling join the symptoms.

Dropsy of the legs in pregnant women

Pregnancy is not the cause of leg swelling in a woman expecting a baby. However, changes are taking place in her body that help to adapt to the increased load - an increase in blood volume, an increase in venous pressure. If the normal course of adaptation is disturbed, edema appears on the legs.

To increase the volume of circulating blood, the hematopoietic system stimulates an increase in the proportion of plasma. In addition, the effects of progesterone and estrogen cause vasodilation, increasing fluid retention in the body. The colloid-osmotic properties of the blood of a pregnant woman also change, there is an imbalance between the excretion and retention of water in the vascular bed, which causes swelling of the legs.

During an increased load, extragenital pathologies may appear, provoking swelling of the legs:

• Heart disease;
• Arterial hypertension;
• Hepatitis;
• Pyelonephritis;
• Glomerulonephritis;
• Heart failure.

With these diseases, venous blood stagnation and the development of dropsy in pregnant women most often occur.

Gestosis, or late toxicosis, provokes an excessive secretion of hormones that cause vascular spasm and increased blood pressure. Loss of protein in the urine and impaired permeability of the vascular walls lead to the fact that blood plasma oozes into the surrounding tissues, causing swelling of the legs. Such swelling is localized on the legs and feet of a pregnant woman and does not cause pain.

Treatment of dropsy of the legs

To eliminate the causes of leg swelling, both conservative and surgical methods of treatment are used.

Basic conservative treatment methods:

• Medication treatment;
• Compression treatment;
• Physiotherapy.

Drug treatment is the main treatment for dropsy of the legs. Medicines eliminate the cause of the disease, act on the mechanism of edema, and have a symptomatic effect.

Pharmacological groups of drugs for the treatment of dropsy:

• Antibiotics - eliminate pathogenic microflora;
• Antiseptics - neutralize the action of pathogenic bacteria;
• Antiparasitic agents - used for filariasis;
• Anti-inflammatory drugs - eliminate swelling, pain, reduce the intensity of inflammation;
• Anticoagulants - reduce blood clotting;
• Fibrinolytics - destroy blood clots;
• Diuretics - remove excess fluid from the body through the kidneys;
• Cardiac glycosides - stimulate the work of the heart muscle;
• APF inhibitors - reduce blood pressure;
• Angioprotectors - increase the resistance of blood vessels to damage;
• Hepatoprotectors - strengthen the walls of liver cells;
• Detoxifying agents - remove toxins from the body;
• Sclerosing agents - regenerate pathologically dilated veins.

For the treatment and prevention of edema, reduction of inflammation, restoration of lymphatic drainage, immunostimulation, physiotherapeutic methods are used:

• Electrophoresis;
• UHF therapy;
• Magnetotherapy,
• Massotherapy,
• Radon and iodine-bromine baths,
• Oxygen therapy.

To reduce the negative manifestations of dropsy, wearing compression hosiery (knee-highs, stockings, tights), bandaging the legs with an elastic bandage is used. This method of treatment creates uniform pressure on the vessels of the lower extremities, does not allow fluid to move back into the tissue from the vessels.

With the ineffectiveness of conservative methods, surgical treatment of diseases that provoke edema is used:

• Installation of a pacemaker, replacement of artificial vessels, heart transplant in the treatment of heart failure;
• Sclerotherapy and removal of superficial veins for varicose veins;
• Removal of leg veins clots;
• Removal of cysts and liver tumors;
• Treatment of fractures and injuries sustained by trauma;
• Puncture of the joint for arthritis.

In many cases, a combination of conservative and surgical methods is used to treat dropsy of the legs.

Author of the article: Alekseeva Maria Yurievna | Therapist

Education: From 2010 to 2016 Practitioner of the therapeutic hospital of the central medical-sanitary unit No. 21, city of elektrostal. Since 2016 she has been working in the diagnostic center No. 3.