Treatment of hypothyroidism edema

Hypothyroidism is a decrease in thyroid function, which is also a relatively common disease. It is mainly related to the reason why the thyroid gland secretes hormones. After suffering from hypothyroidism, one of the most common symptoms is edema in the patient. At this time, it is necessary to seek timely treatment. More serious cases may cause extreme swelling of the legs and hypertrophic arthritis. Let's learn about the treatment methods for hypothyroidism edema.

Treatment of hypothyroidism edema

Myxedema, also known as true myxedema, is caused by increased deposition of mucin in the dermis due to thyroid hormone deficiency. The symptoms are non-pitting edema of the entire skin, whitish or waxy, hard to the touch, and thickened nose and lips. It is more common in patients who have had excessive thyroidectomy due to hyperthyroidism or who have sustained excessive thyroid damage from radiotherapy. Often accompanied by other endocrine diseases.

Mild localized myxedema does not require treatment, but severe progressive lesions should be treated actively because they can cause extreme swelling of the feet and legs or hypertrophic arthritis that affects labor. There is currently no effective treatment.

Topical treatments

You can try local injection of hydrocortisone or hyaluronidase, or apply betamethasone or Fuqingshuang ointment topically (once a night, you can add plastic bandage, the course of treatment is about 1 year). It has certain therapeutic effect on mild and moderate patients. Systemic treatment can be given with corticosteroids (such as oral prednisone) and other immunosuppressive drugs (such as cyclosporine, azathioprine). With the advent of various new long-acting corticosteroids, long-term remission rates have improved. Antithyroid drugs have an adjuvant therapeutic effect on this disease. Other methods include oral estrogen, oral or local injection of L-T3, surgical excision of the skin with myxedema followed by skin grafting, X-ray irradiation of the lesions and pituitary gland, long-term foot bandaging and skin massage.

Some methods of regulating the patient's immune status and inhibiting the proliferation and secretion of fibroblasts are in the research stage; there are reports that intravenous injection of large doses of immunoglobulin can improve skin lesions; hexanoate can inhibit the division and proliferation of fibroblasts, etc., and may be effective in treating this disease; the somatostatin analog octreotide can inhibit the division and proliferation of fibroblasts by binding to receptors and reduce the synthesis of hyaluronic acid in the lesion site. It has been tried for this disease and clinical reports have shown good results.