“I take longer to heal because I have Diabetes”.

This is a statement many patients coming to see Dr. Geller at Desert Foot Surgeons say their first visit. Unfortunately this is a rumor that makes a convenient excuse. When diabetes is controlled you not only reduce your risk of complications such as heart disease, blindness, and kidney failure, but you heal like anyone else.

One out of ten people you meet in the United States has diabetes. Out of the people you know with diabetes, at least one has developed a hole in their skin known as a foot ulcer. The feet are most affected by loss of feeling and circulation. Diabetic foot ulcers are caused by one or both of these complications. What prolongs healing is poor circulation to your legs and feet or walking on an open sore because there is no pain.

Dr. Geller has a special interest in wound healing. At Desert Foot Surgeons we don’t wait for wounds to heal. Wounds are made to heal by fixing poor circulation, getting your weight off of the wound using total contact casting, and even surgery to correct buckled toes, lumps on feet, or skin grafts to cover the defect. Control of your diabetes and compliance with the plan of care is the patient’s role. Healing diabetic foot ulcerations takes a team and the patient is the major player.

If you have a diabetic foot ulcer and have been told you can’t heal because you have diabetes, come and see Dr. Geller at Desert Foot Surgeons.

Before And After Pictures,

(After)

Before Pictures :
WARNING – Click Here for Graphic Images – WARNING

Between 30-50% of patients with diabetes have peripheral neuropathy. This is a nerve injury that prevents you from protecting your own skin by losing feeling. In addition, the nerve damage interferes with your muscles leading to deformities and difficulty walking. Pressure increases over these prominent areas leading to callus formation from repeated injury. Damage from the callus or injury leads to open sores or ulceration.

Your wound care treatment has included some form of “off-loading” by padding or casting. This is how we remove pressure from the open sore to allow the body to heal. Under the care of Dr. Geller you also had to remain in this cast or padding 4 weeks after healing to allow the scar to mature. To prevent return of the ulceration you will need protection from pressure on prominent areas.

You should be very proud of yourself. You have accomplished what more than 90,000 Americans failed to do this year. You saved your leg from amputation due from diabetic ulcer.

More than 90,000 people lost a major part of their foot or the entire leg to complications beginning as a wound on their foot. Some of these were not avoidable, but it is estimated that 64% of these could have been prevented with advanced wound care such as you have done.

Now our focus switches to prevention. You and your physician do not want you to experience anything like this ever again. You have most likely been treated using some form of cast or padding to keep the pressure off your foot and swelling down. Since this was necessary to heal the wound it should be no surprise that something will be needed to keep the wound healed.

Prescription shoes with custom-made inserts are used to cushion and protect the feet. You will have to wear these shoes with inserts everyday for quite some time. Every year your insurance will pay for new shoes. You should receive three pairs of inserts for these shoes to be changed every four months. The longer you stay healed and the better you control the callus formation the more flexible your shoe selection will become.

In some patients surgery was performed to correct deformity and decrease pressure. Even these patients have to wear the prescription shoes with insoles.

Dr. Stephen Geller, AZ Podiatrist