On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
One of the persistent paradoxes in diabetic foot prevention is simple: Diabetes Care, Volume 49, Issue 8. The world’s best protective shoe does no good while sitting beside the door. Now, an important multicenter randomized controlled trial from our longtime Dutch friends and colleagues—led by Lisa Vossen with Jaap van Netten, Sicco Bus, and their... Continue Reading →
A new formative study of an in-home full-color imaging scale offers a glimpse of the Foot Selfie’s next chapter—from early home plantar photography and smartphones to AI, co-creation, and ambient monitoring.
A new 28-item core descriptor set gives diabetes-related foot-ulcer studies a common baseline language—so treatments can be compared more fairly and evidence can travel farther.
Originally published in APMA News, May/June 2026, pages 16–23. The May/June 2026 issue of APMA News devotes eight pages to a two-part feature: a profile of David G. Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Neurological Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, followed by a companion interview with Alexandria Armstrong,... Continue Reading →
The flight was cancelled. The train was cancelled. The keynote was not. How a scrapped DCA–JFK trip turned into a keynote delivered to ten Indian cities from the passenger seat of a car on the New Jersey Turnpike.
In 1,052 patients with diabetic foot ulcers, ten inflammation- and nutrition-derived ratios from routine labs tracked with amputation — and a machine-learning model combining them reached an AUC of 0.894. A cheap blood draw may help forecast which limbs are at risk.
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.
