On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
A Stanford team has taught an algorithm to translate Doppler sounds into clinically meaningful ankle-brachial index ranges—potentially bringing vascular assessment closer to the point of care.
Now published in Surgery: one clinician used conversational AI to vibe-code three interactive data platforms (local, national, and global), translating 15 years of amputation evidence into public tools in under a week at essentially no cost.
We moved to the toe pressure precisely because digital arteries were supposed to be spared from calcification. A new JVS-Vascular Insights study from Welling, Bakker, Ferraresi and colleagues finds digital artery calcification in nearly 30% of limbs, shows it doubles one-year limb-event risk, and that it falsely elevates toe pressure — with a simple fix: when calcium shows on the foot film, subtract 20–30 mmHg.
Our new paper in Burns and Trauma presents the most comprehensive review yet of spooky action at a distance therapies for diabetic limb preservation — from spinal cord stimulation and splenic ultrasound to remote ischemic conditioning and tibial transport. Five modalities, three mechanistic pathways, one shared destination: tissue repair at a distance.
A scoping review from Kanazawa University maps 60 studies on AI-powered thermography for diabetic foot detection — and reveals a critical gap: nearly half of all studies were tested only in controlled environments, not the real world where feet actually live.
A new single-center study from the Netherlands quantifies the devastating outcomes of the diabetic foot attack: only 48.5% wound closure, 46% major amputation by 12 months, 26% one-year mortality, and 12-month amputation-free survival of just 39.7%. Time is tissue.
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 →
Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is one of the most devastating complications of diabetes—contributing to ischemic pain, functional decline, and, in severe cases, amputation. Despite its prevalence, early detection remains elusive, and clinicians continue to search for simple, reliable markers of risk. A new multicohort study led by Wang and colleagues now shines a spotlight on... Continue Reading →
Making limb preservation a national priority- one congressional district at a time Does your congressman or congresswoman know where you are on the amputation heat map? That’s not just a rhetorical question. It’s a matter of life and limb. The American Heart Association’s PAD Collaborative has unveiled a powerful tool: an interactive map showing non-traumatic lower extremity amputation... Continue Reading →
In the landscape of diabetic foot care, the presence of medial arterial calcification (MAC) adds a significant layer of complexity to the management of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). A recent study published in the Annals of Vascular Surgery sheds light on the prognostic value of toe pressure (TP) measurements in predicting outcomes for this challenging patient population.... Continue Reading →
