On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
Every one of us has quoted a healing rate. In clinic, in a grant, in a talk, in a conversation with a patient sitting on the exam table asking the only question that matters: will this close? Most of those quoted numbers came from the control arms of industry trials, which is a bit like... Continue Reading →
A deep-learning retinal biomarker built to estimate coronary artery calcium turns out to track diabetes-related amputation — and it adds signal even after retinopathy is already in the model. Plus a long-overdue nod to Rayaz Malik and the corneal nerve story that got there first.
Six bite-sized clips from my conversation with Dr. Gabrielle (Gabbie) Hutcheson on the Diabetic Foot Files podcast (LIMBWatch Series) — from why the diabetic foot is a silent disease to how teams cut amputations by 60 percent.
A familiar beta-blocker has found an unfamiliar role. Phase 3 data suggest topical esmolol may help diabetic foot ulcers close—and the slowest-healing wounds may be especially interesting.
New in Diabetes Care: dropout from diabetic foot ulcer offloading trials is not random. Slower walking and depressive symptoms predict who leaves (AUC 0.81) — and a lower-burden smart boot kept people engaged. Attrition is signal, not noise.
A new systematic review finds physical inactivity associated with roughly double the risk of diabetic foot ulceration — reframing movement from a liability into something closer to a vital sign.
Now published in Surgery: one clinician used conversational AI to vibe-code three interactive data platforms (local, national, and global), translating 15 years of amputation evidence into public tools in under a week at essentially no cost.
Three new papers converge on a two-cent idea: the neutrophil percentage-to-albumin ratio (NPAR) measures the balance between inflammatory injury and nutritional reserve — tracking both how bad the diabetic foot is now and how the patient fares over years. Plus a clear-eyed look at why AI-driven precision nutrition isn't here yet, and what it will take.
Windy Cole and colleagues propose a master-protocol basket trial that borrows oncology's tissue-agnostic playbook for hard-to-heal wounds — testing a single mechanism-targeted therapy across diabetic foot and venous leg ulcers under one Bayesian, sham-controlled design. We've spent a decade framing the diabetic foot like cancer; here, the trial architecture grows up to match.
The World Cup isn't the only global tournament underway. Thanks to Anica Badanjak and Anela Novak's new Croatian translation, the IWGDF Guidelines now reach patients in a native language on every inhabited continent on Earth — every single one.
