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Wound care


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Diabetic foot ulcers have the potential to carry a huge cost, both to patients – who can end up losing part of their lower limb – and to hospitals through the expenditure used in managing them. We could be on the cusp of a turning point, however, with a variety of researchers reporting successful outcomes from a new ‘fast-track pathway’, designed to diagnose and treat this type of chronic wound quickly. Andrea Valentino learns more, talking to Dr José Luis Lázaro-Martínez, an expert in podiatric medicine and professor at Complutense University of Madrid; and Dr Marco Meloni of the University of Tor Vergata.


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iabetes is one of the major scourges of contemporary medicine. In the United States a bewildering one in ten people suffer from the condition, with similar figures emerging from Britain and other Western nations. Yet, if the causes and consequences of these overlapping diseases are generally understood in the medical profession – a lack of insulin for type 1 and obesity and poor diet for type 2 – the same can’t always be said of the wider public. According to research by the World Health Organisation, in fact, half of all


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sufferers don’t even know they have diabetes. This can quickly encourage serious problems, with diabetes ultimately to blame for hundreds of thousands of deaths related to diseases of the heart and kidneys each year. But if diabetes is an effective killer on both sides of the Atlantic, it’s equally responsible for a shocking number of amputations. Once again, the statistics from the US are instructive here, with 73,000 diabetic Americans obliged to have a lower limb removed each year.


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