Diabetes Wound Care Article Archives

The incidence of limb-threatening ulcerations in diabetics is very high, affecting approximately one in six to seven patients. Non-healing "diabetic" ulcers are the major cause of leg, foot, and toe amputations in this country, after traumatic injuries such as motor vehicle accidents. These ulcerations do not occur spontaneously; they are always preceded by gradual or sudden injury to the skin by some external factor. Preventing such injuries can prevent their sad consequences.

5 comments - Posted Aug 4, 2008

The newly opened Center for Wound Care and Hyperbaric Medicine in Stoughton, Mass., is now offering comprehensive wound management care, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), which has been used successfully to treat diabetic ulcers.

1 comment - Posted Jul 31, 2008

The use of honey as a healing salve was recently the subject of a review of eighteen studies covering over sixty years. According to the study author, Dr. Fasal Raul Khan, honey was the bee's knees for wound healing throughout ancient history - it was even found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, still edible after all those years.

6 comments - Posted Oct 31, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL, June 19, 2007 - Birgitta I. Rice, MS, RPh, CHES, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, has developed a therapy that is proven to relieve leg pain and improve healing of chronic foot ulcers in patients with diabetes or peripheral arterial disease. The training protocol was published in the May/June issue of The Diabetes Educator.

0 comments - Posted Jun 22, 2007

In days of yore, along about the time when bloodletting was considered a legitimate cure, maggots were a popular tool in the surgeon's black bag. In the Civil War, doctors employed busy maggots to clean rotten tissue from wounds that might otherwise have led to amputation.

0 comments - Posted Jun 21, 2007

Dr. Jennifer Eddy of the University of Wisconsin is currently conducting the first randomized, double-blind controlled trial of honey as a treatment for diabetic ulcers - not to eat, but as a salve.

0 comments - Posted Jun 8, 2007

Every chronic disease brings with it fears and concerns, and people with diabetes face an especially daunting possibility: infections that never heal, potentially ending in the loss of a lower limb.

1 comment - Posted Jun 4, 2007

When 18 veterans with diabetes who had a total of 20 nonhealing foot ulcers were treated either with conventional therapy or with maggot therapy, the maggots came out ahead.

1 comment - Posted May 1, 2003

The U.S. National Institutes of Health recently awarded a $1 million grant to a research team in Scotland to begin clinical trials of a new method to treat nonhealing wounds such as diabetic ulcers and pressure sores, according to a release from the University of Dundee.

0 comments - Posted Apr 1, 2002

The use of lasers in surgery and to treat diabetic retinopathy is well known. A different type of laser, low-level laser therapy (LLLT), is now making news in medical circles.

0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2001

"Maggot debridement is a valuable and rational treatment option for many ambulatory, home-bound and extended-care patients who have non-healing wounds," say researchers from the University of California, Irvine in the September issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2001

0 comments - Posted Nov 1, 2001

Electric pulses helped to heal foot ulcers for people with diabetes, according to the results of a study out of the University of Texas that were published in the June issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2001

When conventional healing methods don't provide the results the physicians intended, a more advanced treatment method usually comes into play—the use of adjunctive hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 2001

Podiatrists argue that moist-wound healing is of utmost importance for diabetic foot wounds to properly heal. According to Debashish Chakravarthy, PhD, head of consumer business development for Advanced Medical Solutions, a new bandage, called the Spyroflex, is specially designed to provide this type of healing environment.

0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 2000

On May 8, an advisory panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended approval of the bioengineered skin substitute Apligraf.

0 comments - Posted Jan 7, 2000

Dermagraft, a human skin replacement for the treatment of diabetic foot ulcers has been recommended to the FDA for approval on the condition that Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc. and its partner Smith & Nephew plc perform a post marketing study.

0 comments - Posted Mar 1, 1998

An estimated 1.2 million people with diabetes suffer from lower extremity ulcers each year, and of all the foot amputations in the United States, 84 percent, or 60,000 amputations, are related to diabetic foot ulcers.

1 comment - Posted Nov 1, 1997

The FDA found an experimental drug safe and effective for the treatment of diabetic ulcers that occur on the lower limbs and feet.

0 comments - Posted Sep 1, 1997

A new topical skin cream, Iamin Hydrating Gel, promises to ease the pain associated with chronic wounds by speeding the healing process and promoting a moister environment.

0 comments - Posted Oct 1, 1996

Dr. Tamara Fishman has begun her crusade. With her free newsletter, The Wound Care Institute, Fishman has taken it upon herself to improve the distribution of current medical information.

0 comments - Posted Jun 1, 1996

To most people, maggots are not their idea of a medical treatment. However, to many doctors, fly larvae do have a place in modern medicine - that place being inside open wounds.

0 comments - Posted May 1, 1995