Four Essential Elements For Diabetic Limb Salvage Programs

What are the key elements a limb salvage program needs to be sustainable and successful? In a new study in Diabetic Foot and Ankle, my colleagues and I propose four steps that can help save more lives and limbs.¹

In helping to set up limb salvage programs over the last 25 years, our goal has been to create a model that might be a template for success. This is a template that we believe physicians can use in a variety of centers and that can be incorporated worldwide. This is what we are working to do now at the University of California and the Southwestern Academic Limb Salvage Alliance (SALSA), and what we have helped to do at a number of centers worldwide.

The four elements of the limb preservation program start with the development of a “hot foot line” for urgent patient referrals.¹ The second element is a wound healing clinic that might be a place for patients to go after discharge from the “hot foot line” to treat tissue loss. After wound healing occurs, the next place for our patients to go would be to a remission clinic with the goal to increase ulcer-free days. The final step is to develop a community of regional screening programs for our patients.

As our study notes, one can measure outcomes from each of the four components as part of an audit to facilitate quality improvement through assessment and review as well as develop benchmarks for quality of care.¹

Reference

1. Khan T, Skin L, Woelfel S, Rowe V, Wilson BL, Armstrong DG. Building a scalable diabetic limb preservation program: four steps to success. Diabet Foot Ankle. 2018; 9(1):1452513.