Relation of Skin Capillary Pressure in Patients with Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus to Complications and Metabolic Control

STUDIES of blood flow in tissues and organs in patients with diabetes mellitus have revealed a typical pattern of change. 1 , 2 There is an early increase in flow that is partly attenuated by improved glycemic control. With increasing duration of disease, blood flow becomes impaired and autoregulation is lost. The remarkable conformity of this pattern of changes in diverse microcirculatory beds, such as skin, 3 , 4 subcutaneous tissue, 4 , 5 eye, 6 , 7 and kidney, 8 , 9 suggests that a basic microvascular control mechanism is disordered, either directly or indirectly, by the metabolic disturbance of diabetes. Several groups of investigators have proposed a hemodynamic hypothesis to link these changes . . .