On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
A new systematic review and meta-analysis from Lavery, Wukich, Peters and team asks whether pre-biopsy antibiotics actually reduce bacterial culture yield in suspected diabetic foot osteomyelitis. Spoiler: maybe not.
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 →
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 →
A new study published in The International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds by our long time friends and colleagues in Spain offers a cautionary reminder: not all positive cultures mean bone infection. In a cohort of 93 patients undergoing conservative surgery for diabetic foot osteomyelitis, researchers compared microbiological cultures from bone resection margins with histopathology—the gold standard. Their... Continue Reading →
