Hot Spots on Feet Mean Trouble for Diabetics ; Signal Start of Dangerous Skin Ulcers

Jan 16, 01:26 PM

WASHINGTON Diabetics, watch out: A hot spot on your foot can signal an ulcer is brewing, a wound that could cost your limb.

New research shows that using a special thermometer to measure the temperature of their soles can give patients enough early warning to avoid one of diabetes' most intractable complications.

Foot ulcers are so slow-healing and vulnerable to infection that they're to blame for most of the roughly 80,000 amputations of toes, feet and lower legs that diabetics undergo each year.

Using the thermometer reduced by nearly two-thirds the number of high-risk patients who got foot ulcers, said Dr. David Armstrong of Chicago.

How does it work?

Inflammation accompanies tissue injury, and inflammation can be measured by a bump in temperature, but tissue decay will not begin right away.

"A wound really will heat up before it breaks down," Armstrong said.

"Heat is one of the most sensitive things, one of the first things that happens when we begin to have tissue breakdown," says Dr. Crystal Holmes, a University of Michigan podiatrist who has begun prescribing the thermometers.

Maker Xilas Medicalis working to make the thermometer resemble a bathroom scale that would automatically alert a doctor. Step up, and it would flash any trouble spots to the patient, and to a computer that alerts a doctor. For now, though, Xilas is selling a hand-held device by prescription.

(c) 2008 Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Hot Spots on Feet Mean Trouble for Diabetics ; Signal Start of Dangerous Skin Ulcers
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