Diabetic Foot Ulcers – Doppler Tests

Transcript

If there’s a problem there, he or she might grab a device called the doppler unit, which is something that is often pocket size that they can take and can actually put on top of the foot or on the side of the foot and it kind of makes it sound like *Whoosh*. Google it and listen for it and you’ll be able to see. That can give him or her a wealth of information just by listening to the rate, the rhythm, the breadth of that sound. A really good doctor or nurse or technician can get a lot of information from that. Still more information can be gotten from a fancier version of that doppler, which can be done in a vascular laboratory by specially trained clinicians and technicians who are very skilled in that area. Still other things that can be used to test you are things that can measure tissue oxygenation. There is something called transcutaneous oximetry or tcpO2. That can check the amount of oxygen that’s coming off of your skin and your tissue oxygenation. Still something more (just to get fancy) would be something called skin perfusion pressure. That uses a fancy tool called a laser doppler to check your circulation. So you see there’s a whole bunch of different things that can be used (and many things I’m not mentioning) but those are just some things that a doctor or a nurse might spout out while he or she is checking you.