A study presented at the 2014 Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and reported in MedPage Today cautions that reports of the decline in diabetic foot ulcers may not be accurate.
According to “Diabetic foot infections fall—not!,” the incidence of diabetic foot infections decreased from every 2.3 of 100 diabetes-related discharges in the United States in 1996 to 1.1 of 100 diabetes-related discharges in the United states in 2010. However, the change may be more a result of changes in the definition of diabetes. Because more patients are now diagnosed with diabetes, the percentage of patients with diabetic foot infections decreases.
The study found that the absolute number of diabetic foot infections has remained “fairly constant.”
