The diabetic rapid response acute foot team: 7 essential skills for targeted limb salvage

People with diabetes are prone to develop lower-extremity ulcerations and infections, both of which serve as major risk factors for limb amputation. The development of lower-extremity complications of diabetes is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the development of interdisciplinary teams to manage the myriad factors that complicate the treatment of high-risk patients, particularly in the perihospitalization period.

This article presents 7 essential skills that necessarily allow the limb salvage team to appropriately manage the most common presenting comorbidities in patients with diabetes, including vasculopathy, infection, and deformity.

Seven essentials skills have been demonstrated to promote the greatest salvage outcomes, and these are the ability to (1) perform hemodynamic and anatomic vascular assessment with revascularization, as necessary; (2) perform neurologic workup; (3) perform site-appropriate culture technique; (4) perform wound assessment and staging/grading of infection and ischemia; (5) perform site-specific bedside and intraoperative incision and debridement; (6) initiate and modify culture-specific and patient-appropriate antibiotic therapy; and (7) perform appropriate postoperative monitoring to reduce risk of reulceration and infection.

Utilization of these 7 essential skills as the core basis for interdisciplinary limb salvage team models will provide clinicians guidance when establishing such teams. Interdisciplinary teams have been demonstrated to improve quality and efficiency of patient care, thus improving overall outcomes and reducing amputation rates.