ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 1999 December;18(4):327-30

Copyright © 2000 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Therapeutic efficacy of flavonoids in oedema following reperfusion on acutely ischaemic legs

Filis K. A., Georgopoulos S. E., Papas S. C., Votteas V., Bastounis E. A.

From the First Department of Surgery, University of Athens Medical School, Athens, Greece

Back­ground. The aim of this study was to inves­ti­gate the ­effect of a pur­i­fied, micro­nised, flav­o­noid frac­tion (Daf­lon) in lower limb oede­ma devel­oped after ­delayed embo­lec­to­my and suc­cess­ful reper­fu­sion of acute­ly ischaem­ic legs.
Meth­ods. Our ­series con­sist­ed of 19 ­patients with pro­longed, acute ischae­mia of the lower extrem­ity ­caused by arte­ri­al embo­lism, who had under­gone suc­cess­ful embo­lec­to­my. ­Patients were ran­dom­ised into two ­groups; ten ­patients (group I) treat­ed with flav­o­noids, were com­pared to nine given a pla­ce­bo. Ankle and calf cir­cum­fer­enc­es, ­venous capac­i­tance and ­venous emp­ty­ing time were meas­ured pre­op­er­a­tive­ly [T1], on the 2nd [T2], 5th [T3], 8th [T4] and 30th [T5] post­op­er­a­tive days.
­Results. An ­increase of ankle and calf cir­cum­fer­ence up to 9% and 13.5% respec­tive­ly, as com­pared with pre­op­er­a­tive val­ues was dem­on­strat­ed. There was a reduc­tion in oede­ma for­ma­tion in ­patients with the Daf­lon group, which ­reached sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance only in the ­ankles (p=0.0276). Calf dif­fer­enc­es were sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant on the sec­ond and fifth post­op­er­a­tive days (p<0.05). ­Venous hae­mod­y­nam­ics were con­sid­er­ably ­improved by Daf­lon (p<0.001).
Con­clu­sions. Daf­lon 500 mg had an inhib­i­to­ry ­effect on mod­er­ate oede­ma devel­oped after revas­cu­lar­isa­tion of an ischaem­ic limb.