Diabetic Foot Ulcers – Wound Assessment

Transcript

If you show up with a wound, the things that we care about include not only the wound but also the ischemia (or bad blood flow) and the potential for a foot infection. If you add that up, that spells WIFI: Wound, Ischemia, Foot Infection. I want you to think about that now: WIFI. And you have some WIFI settings that you can use. For the wound, the doctor or nurse might assess the wound as mild, moderate, or severe based on certain criteria. They might also assess the ischemia (or the bad blood flow) as mild, moderate, and severe using tests like doppler tests or other tests to look at the amount of oxygen that comes off of your skin. The third thing that they look at – the foot infection – is also based on assessments and tests, and that’s none, mild, moderate, and severe and is based not only on the local signs, but also some systemic signs and laboratory signs as well. WIFI – I want you to remember that.