Diabetic foot

What is dia diabetic foot?

Foot problems are common in people with diabetes. They can happen over time when high blood sugar damages the nerves and blood vessels in the feet. The nerve damage, called diabetic neuropathy, can cause numbness, tingling, pain, or a loss of feeling in your feet.

This is a mi or issue to the majority, but it can lead to severe complications.

Mainly septicemia or worse leading to an amputation.

During my years of study they emphasized that prevention is better than  cure.

What causes diabetic feet?

Long-term high blood sugar can cause a type of nerve damage called diabetic neuropathy. Diabetic neuropathy can occur throughout the body, but most often in the legs and feet. The condition might make you lose feeling in your feet.

Symptoms 

If you have diabetes, having too much glucose in your blood for a long time can cause some serious complications, including foot problems.

How Can Diabetes Affect My Feet?

Diabetes can cause two problems that can affect your feet:

• Diabetic neuropathy. Uncontrolled diabetes can damage your nerves. If you have damaged nerves in your legs and feet, you might not feel heat, cold, or pain there. This lack of feeling is called "sensory diabetic neuropathy." If you do not feel a cut or sore on your foot because of neuropathy, the cut could get worse and become infected. The muscles of your foot may not work properly because nerves to the muscles are damaged. This could cause your foot to not align properly and create too much pressure on one part of your foot.

Peripheral Neuropathy

This type usually affects the feet and legs. Rare cases affect the arms, abdomen, and back.

Symptoms include:

• Tingling
• Numbness (which may become permanent)
• Burning (especially in the evening)
• Pain

Fungal infection of nails

Nails that are infected with a fungus may become discolored (yellowish-brown or opaque), thick, and brittle and may separate from the rest of your nail. In some cases, your nail may crumble. The dark, moist, and warm environment of shoes can help a fungus grow. An injury to your nail can also lead to a fungal infection. Fungal nail infections are hard to treat. Medications applied to the nail are available, but they only help a small number of fungal nail problems. You may need prescription medicine that you take by mouth. Your doctor might also remove the damaged nail.

How many people get amputations as a result of diabetic foot.

In the United States, every year about 73,000 amputations of the lower limb not related to trauma are performed on people with diabetes. 3. Of non-traumatic amputations in the United States, 60% are performed on people with diabetes.

In the United States, every 17 seconds someone is diagnosed with diabetes, and everyday 230 Americans with diabetes will suffer an amputation,” Fakorede wrote. “Throughout the world, it is estimated that every 30 seconds a leg is amputated. And 85% of these amputations were the result of a diabetic foot ulcer.”

How to prevent diabetic foot?

1. Do inspect your feet daily. ...
2. Do wear comfortable shoes. ...
3. Do wash your feet regularly. ...
4. Do use lubricants  or moisturizers  to keep your skin from getting dry or cracking. ...
5. Do cut your nails straight across, and avoid cutting into the corners of the nails.

Management of diabetic foot 

The management of diabetic foot ulcers requires offloading the wound, daily saline or similar dressings to provide a moist wound environment, debridement when necessary, antibiotic therapy with or without surgical intervention if osteomyelitis or soft tissue infection is present, optimal control of blood glucose, and evaluation and correction of peripheral arterial insufficiency. 

To promote ulcer healing in a person with diabetes and a neuropathic plantar ulcer, consider, if nonsurgical offloading therapy is unsuccessful, Achilles tendon lengthening, metatarsal head resection, or joint arthroplasty.

A multidisciplinary approach including preventive strategy, patient and staff education, and multifactorial treatment of foot ulcers has been reported to reduce the amputation rate by more than 50%.link