For more than two generations, our team and others have explored the use of temperature monitoring to predict and prevent diabetic foot ulcers . Typically, this is done by comparing one foot to its corresponding contralateral side. New data suggest that algorithms can be used to accurately predict ulceration using only one foot. This has profound implications for the future of AI-based remote patient monitoring.
Unilateral remote temperature monitoring to predict future ulceration for the diabetic foot in remission
- Lawrence A Lavery1,
- Brian J Petersen2,
- David R Linders2,
- Jonathan D Bloom2,
- Gary M Rothenberg3,
- David G Armstrong4
Abstract
Objective Daily remote foot temperature monitoring is an evidence-based preventive practice for patients at risk for diabetic foot complications. Unfortunately, the conventional approach requires comparison of temperatures between contralaterally matched anatomy, limiting practice in high-risk cohorts such as patients with a wound to one foot and those with proximal lower extremity amputation (LEA). We developed and assessed a novel approach for monitoring of a single foot for the prevention and early detection of diabetic foot complications. The purpose of this study was to assess the sensitivity, specificity, and lead time associated with unilateral diabetic foot temperature monitoring.
Research design and methods We used comparisons among ipsilateral foot temperatures and between foot temperatures and ambient temperature as a marker of inflammation. We analyzed data collected from a 129-participant longitudinal study to evaluate the predictive accuracy of our approach. To evaluate classification accuracy, we constructed a receiver operator characteristic curve and reported sensitivity, specificity, and lead time for four different monitoring settings.
Results Using this approach, monitoring a single foot was found to predict 91% of impending non-acute plantar foot ulcers on average 41 days before clinical presentation with a resultant mean 4.2 alerts per participant-year. By adjusting the threshold temperature setting, the specificity could be increased to 78% with corresponding reduced sensitivity of 53%, lead time of 33 days, and 2.2 alerts per participant-year.
Conclusions Given the high incidence of subsequent diabetic foot complications to the sound foot in patients with a history of proximal LEA and patients being treated for a wound, practice of daily temperature monitoring of a single foot has the potential to significantly improve outcomes and reduce resource utilization in this challenging high-risk population.
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