Newly revised to reflect the latest Standards of Care in Diabetes, this fourth edition of Clinical Care of the Diabetic Foot is an essential guide for all clinicians, healthcare providers, and educators who help people with diabetes avoid and manage this challenging complication. This new edition addresses the full scope of treatment, including:
Pathogenesis
Screening and Risk Assessment
Ulcer Assessment and Classification
Adjunctive Wound Therapies
Dressings and Local Wound Care
Charcot Foot
Soft Tissue Reconstruction
Infection
Peripheral Artery Disease
Remission
"Foreword", Clinical Care of the Diabetic Foot, Fourth Edition, David G. Armstrong, DPM, MD, PHD, Lawrence A. Lavery, DPM, MPH
Download citation file:
“The era of coma has given way to the era of complications.”
—Elliot P. Joslin
This quote, made in the first half of the last century by the late Professor Joslin, is as fitting today as it was 70 years ago. Our patients no longer die from acute conditions stemming from hyperglycemia. Rather, the chronic complications of the disease predominate. Chief among these complications is pathology related to the diabetic foot, which is the most common reason for hospital admission in people with diabetes. Only a generation ago, most clinicians considered it a fait accompli that once a person with diabetes developed lower-extremity complications, the end result would be an amputation, reamputation, and premature death. Over the past generation, care of the diabetic foot has matured from its previous state of nihilism into what is now a bona fide area of subspecialty and hope. It is now widely accepted that many lower-extremity complications of diabetes are preventable.
While many clinicians will appreciate that the diabetic foot is an area that deserves attention, most are so focused on and inundated with more proximal issues, that the myriad potential distal complications seem at once both daunting and beyond control. It is true that care of the diabetic foot spans the spectrum from surgery to endocrinology, from podiatry to infectious disease, from psychology to dermatology. It is to these clinicians to whom this book is dedicated.
This fourth edition refreshes data on screening, healing, and prevention. Most notably, the comprehensive diabetic foot exam and rapid response systems are further articulated and outlined as “toe and flow,” and other models of diabetic foot units become more common throughout the world.
We are honored and humbled to have worked with such a stellar group of clinician-scientists in the production of this work. This book assembles under one cover many of the people collectively responsible for transforming and advancing diabetic foot and wound care from its beginnings into its current state. This assembly will discuss nearly all aspects of care of the diabetic foot and wound and will do so in a practical, yet evidence-based manner.
To you, the reader, we extend an enthusiastic invitation to avail yourself of the collective wisdom of these contributors. It is our hope that this work stimulates you to investigate further what we believe is a fascinating and fruitful area of medicine. Enjoy.
David G . Armstrong, DPM, MD, PhD
Lawrence A . Lavery, DPM, MPH
