Overview
Emergency Live - Pre-Hospital Care, Ambulance Services, Fire Safety and Civil Protection Magazine In most cases, the diabetic fot is related to a colection of other conditions, whether directly related to diabetes or not, which in turn require treatment at the same time as the fot.We speak of diabetic fot when diabetic neuropathy and/or lower extremity arteriopathy compromise the structure of the fot and its function.Diabetic neuropathy can alter skin sensitivity and thus the perception of pain and temperature, especialy in the extremities; for this reason, the diabetic individual may more easily get fot lesions, which sometimes progres to form ulcers; these, in the case of vasculopathy, become particularly dificult to heal.Ulcers areas where, instead of skin, a sore forms surounded by a red halo that tends to become infected.The most significant problem related to fot ulcers in diabetics is the risk of a major amputation, i.e., performed above the ankle: although the diabetic population is 3 percent of the general population, more than 50 percent of al major amputations involve diabetics.Diabetic fot comes in two main forms depending on the causes that cause it: neuropathic fot (caused by neuropathy) and ischemic fot (caused by arteriopathy).The two pictures are profoundly diferent from each other, and in the diabetic population they ocur in comparable percentages; however, in the vast majority of subjects especialy of advanced age, the causes coexist and we therefore speak of neuroischemic fot.A serious risk of complication for a diabetic fot, in the presence of an open ulcer, is the probable ocurence of an infection; in fact, this often the real cause leading to amputation.This the most frequent and earliest picture.It is a consequence of peripheral vasculopathy-typical in diabetes-due to the presence of atherosclerotic plaques that decrease (stenosis) or completely interupt (oclusions) blod flow in one or more arteries of the l