On diabetic foot, wound healing, amputation prevention, and the merger of consumer tech with medical devices
A new protocol paper in Sensors describes a chatbot that doses walking like a drug for patients in diabetic foot remission.
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 systematic review finds that roughly one in three adults in remission after a healed diabetic foot ulcer develop a recurrent ulcer within 12 months — a risk comparable to several common cancers. Healing is the beginning of the next chapter, not the end of the story.
A recent bibliographic review by Marina Faus Camarena and colleagues, published in the journal Sensors, provides an update on the use of infrared thermography for the early detection of diabetic foot complications[1]. This non-invasive diagnostic tool could revolutionize the way we approach diabetic foot care, offering a means to detect early-stage ulcers and potentially prevent... Continue Reading →
Data reported by Rovers and coworkers on 151 people in diabetic foot remission from our colleagues under the aegis of Sicco Bus and Jaap Van Netten. Bottom line: like with glucose monitoring (particularly in its early days) adherence to thermometry is spotty (56.6% adhering to daily checks at 18 months). We aimed to investigate adherence... Continue Reading →
Terrific work from Featherson and coworkers lending further light on the role (and limitations) of thermometry/thermography in predicting reulceration in diabetic foot remission Monitoring foot skin temperatures at home have been shown to be effective at preventing the occurrence of diabetic foot ulcers. In this study, the construct validity of using >2.2°C difference between contralateral... Continue Reading →
Important work from Sicco Bus, et al. published in BMJ Diabetes This RCT (DIATEMP) suggests that it's not enough just to know that you've a preulcerative hot spot-- but you need to do something about it. In this case, patients were told to reduce activity. Effectiveness of at-home skin temperature monitoring in reducing the incidence... Continue Reading →
Superb work from Georgina Gethin and team at NUI Galway. Can a wound have a "normal" temperature? Can it be "febrile"? Wound bed temperature measurement holds the potential to be a safe, easy to use, and low‐cost tool to aid objective wound bed assessment, clinical decision making and improved patient outcomes. However, there is no... Continue Reading →
