A Retrospective Analysis of Patients With Full Thickness Wounds in Limbs With Critical Ischemia

Critical Limb Ischemia

Critical Ischemia

Once the patients are identified that have a full thickness wound on a limb clearly identified as having critical limb ischemia, these patients will be evaluated. The data that will be extracted from each chart will include patient's age, patient's gender, number of office visits, presence of diabetes, presence of osteomyelitis, type and amount of antibiotic administered, number of hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and if the wound healed.

Clinicians have even learned to group patients into different etiologic categories based on underlying disease such as diabetes mellitus, decubitus ulcer, surgical site infection, venous insufficiency, arterial insufficiency and others. It seems that wounds have been grouped into these categories because of their common barriers, which should allow us more precise algorithms and may provide better outcomes. That is diabetics tend to have the barriers of poor perfusion, endothelial cell dysfunction, white blood cell dysfunction, hyperglycemia, neuropathy and repetitive trauma. Venous insufficiency patients tend to have perivascular cuffing and peri wound edema. However patients with venous leg ulcers commonly have peripheral arterial disease and diabetes (3). The point is regardless of the etiology of the wound every patient must be evaluated for all barriers on every visit. Arbitrarily dividing chronic wounds in the etiologic categories has not significantly improved wound healing outcomes.

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