On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
Please see our manuscript here. Winston Churchill famously described Russia as ‘a riddle,wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’ in a 1939 broadcast .Indeed, two centuries after the birth of Jean- Martin Charcot, thecondition that bears his name remains, as Churchill might say,an enigma wrapped in oedema—an inflammatory mystery toooften misread or misdiagnosed as mundane.... Continue Reading →
Exciting new data from our friend and colleague Ben Lipsky and his team highlights a potential shift in how we approach one of our most stubborn challenges: Staphylococcus aureus (StA) in diabetic foot osteomyelitis (DFO). Current standards of care for DFO are often unsatisfactory. This Phase 2, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial investigated BX211, a personalized... Continue Reading →
In the journey to eliminate preventable amputations, we continue to look for ways to harness the body’s own regenerative potential. Our latest brief communication describes a significant “first” in the field: the application of fully automated tibial periosteal distraction (PD) for limb preservation. While it has long been understood that applying controlled “tension-stress” to tissue... Continue Reading →
The revolving door of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) remains one of the most punishing cycles in limb preservation. While total contact casting and other standard off-loading approaches are effective for initial wound closure, they often fail to address the underlying biomechanical driver: persistent plantar pressure from bony “hot spots.” Emerging evidence suggests that minimally invasive... Continue Reading →
For years, we’ve operated under a simple clinical assumption: if a diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is infected, we reach for the antibiotics—often broad-spectrum heavy hitters like levofloxacin. But new molecular evidence suggests that while we are busy fighting bacteria, we may be unintentionally collateral-damaging the wound’s own healing machinery. A recent study published in Scientific... Continue Reading →
Tiny Robots, Big Gains: Is Nanobotics the Future of Limb Salvage? The "holy grail" of wound healing has always been a treatment that doesn't just sit on the wound but actively works within it. Traditional dressings—even the fancy ones—are largely passive barriers. But a groundbreaking review recently published in the International Journal of Nanomedicine suggests... Continue Reading →
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LOS ANGELES, CA — Dr. David G. Armstrong, Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Neurological Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, has reached a historic bibliometric milestone. According to the latest data from Google Scholar, Dr. Armstrong has become the first podiatric surgeon in the history of the specialty to... Continue Reading →
For decades, the standard response to a diabetic foot ulcer has been to shut everything down. We focus so intently on offloading that we often inadvertently prescribe a total sedentary lifestyle. But as our colleagues at the University of Michigan point out in their recent review, we need to shift the narrative toward "Toe, Flow,... Continue Reading →
We often view lower extremity amputation (LEA) as the culmination of a rapid clinical decline, but new data suggests the warning signs are flashing nearly a decade in advance. A large 10-year national study out of Denmark recently identified specific healthcare and sociodemographic markers that can predict amputation risk long before the situation becomes "limb... Continue Reading →
Friends, we have some serious dogma-busting data to discuss today. For as long as most of us have been in the limb salvage game, the percutaneous bone biopsy has been preached as the absolute "Gold Standard" for guiding antibiotic therapy in Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis (DFO). The logic was sound: if you want to know what’s... Continue Reading →
