On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
Team, we often talk about the "endgame" of limb salvage—the complex surgeries, the revascularization, the high-tech grafts. But the truth? The war against amputation is usually won or lost long before a patient ever sees a surgeon. It’s won in the primary care office. Our latest paper, just out in the Journal of Diabetes and... Continue Reading →
Important nationwide data coming out of Australia from our friend Jonathan Shaw and the team. We often talk about the burden of diabetes, but this study puts a hard number on the "time toxicity" of hospitalization. The Bed-Day Burden Let’s look at the raw numbers. People with diabetes are racking up massive excess time in... Continue Reading →
Treating Diabetic Foot Osteomyelitis (DFO) in the forefoot is a daily battle in the trenches of limb preservation. It is the most common location for DFU, DFI, and DFO, occurring in up to 90% of cases. While we often lean on conservative standard care, it frequently fails when the bone is involved. Our colleagues in... Continue Reading →
By: David G. Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD We often discuss frailty as a geriatric syndrome—something to worry about when our patients reach their 70s or 80s. However, new data suggests we are missing a massive "middle" demographic that is silently struggling. This likely affects our efforts on a daily basis. In a fascinating new article... Continue Reading →
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE LOS ANGELES – The work of David G. Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD, and the Southwestern Academic Limb Salvage Alliance (SALSA) has crossed a significant bibliometric threshold, surpassing 90,000 citations in peer-reviewed literature. According to Google Scholar, Professor Armstrong’s research now holds an h-index of 133 and an i10-index of 549, reflecting the... Continue Reading →
Understanding the Vascular Dynamics of DFU Healing and Pathology A recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine by Christensen et al. (2025) utilized Oxygen-15 Labeled Water PET imaging to investigate resting skeletal muscle perfusion in patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs), comparing them to healthy controls. This... Continue Reading →
A persistent question in the management of infected diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) is deceptively simple: Does it matter whether we swab or take tissue? Guidelines emphasize tissue sampling, yet swabbing is easier, cheaper, and far more widely used. The CODIFI2 randomized controlled trial, published in Health Technology Assessment (2025), offers timely insight — though, as... Continue Reading →
I Reflections on new work from the International Flow and Toe Research Team (iFORT) One of the most persistent challenges in limb preservation is not the first ulcer — it is the next one. Recurrence remains a defining feature of the disease, with up to 60% of people developing a new ulcer within three years... Continue Reading →
Lima, Peru – November 2025 David G. Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Surgery and Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California, delivered two featured lectures in Lima, Peru, highlighting the intersection of innovation, technology, and interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing chronic disease and diabetic foot care. At the 2nd Congress on Research and... Continue Reading →
Published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, the LEGenD-1 trial represents a step toward a potential milestone in regenerative medicine and limb preservation. The study, titled “Anatomically Directed Lower Extremity Gene Therapy for Ulcer Healing: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study,” demonstrates that gene therapy can safely potentially accelerate wound healing in patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia... Continue Reading →
