Foot Ulcers
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Diabetic Foot and Wound Center
Wound Care Specialists & Podiatrists located in Bakersfield, CA
Chronic foot ulcers put you at risk for serious complications, including limb loss. To minimize your chances of needing amputation and other complex surgeries, the wound care specialists at Diabetic Foot and Wound Center in Bakersfield, California, use state-of-the-art diagnostic tools and integrative treatments for foot ulcers. Without treatment, foot ulcers can diminish your quality of life. To learn more, call Diabetic Foot and Wound Center or book an appointment online today. Walk-ins are also welcome seven days a week for urgent care.
Foot Ulcers Q & A
What are foot ulcers?
Foot ulcers are slow-healing wounds or sores that can easily become infected without the right care. They can happen at any time, but most foot ulcers develop from certain injuries, infections, and diseases.
What causes foot ulcers?
The most common cause of foot ulcers is diabetes. This potentially dangerous health condition happens when your blood sugar levels are too high. When your blood sugar levels remain high for long periods of time, they can lead to nerve damage in your lower extremities (peripheral neuropathy).
This means that people with diabetes often don’t notice when they have a cut or scrape on their feet because they can’t feel the pain very strongly.
If you have diabetes, you may also have narrowed arteries, which disrupts your body’s ability to heal. Narrowed arteries combined with nerve damage can leave your diabetic foot ulcer unable to heal on its own, raising your risk of infection.
Am I at risk of getting foot ulcers?
You’re at risk of foot ulcers if you:
- Have poor circulation
- Walk around barefoot
- Wear tight shoes
- Have diabetes
- Smoke
- Are overweight
- Have high cholesterol or high blood pressure
- Don’t exercise
Foot ulcers look like deep red craters in the skin. If they’re infected, they may be swollen with pus. An untreated foot ulcer raises your risk of serious complications, such as foot amputation, so it’s important to seek help right away if you think you have one.
Diabetic Foot and Wound Center has a walk-in clinic that’s open seven days a week for your convenience.
What are the treatments for foot ulcers?
The wound care specialists at Diabetic Foot and Wound Center combine a variety of treatments to effectively eliminate your foot ulcer without damaging healthy tissue. Some of the common treatments they recommend include:
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a non-surgical treatment that exposes you to pure oxygen in a pressurized chamber. This delivers much-needed oxygen directly to your wound to accelerate the healing process.
Debridement
The primary goal of debridement is to remove dead and damaged tissue from your wound to help it heal. There are many ways the team can carry out debridement, such as enzymatic, surgical, autolytic, and even maggot therapy.
Bioengineered skin and growth factor therapy
Bioengineered skin embeds dermal and epidermal layers of tissue into your skin’s supportive structure, called the acellular matrix. This tissue uses your cells to promote healing, which the team further accelerates with growth factors.
The wound care team also offers medications, laser therapy, and surgery to treat slow-healing foot ulcers.
After a comprehensive evaluation of your wound, the specialists at Diabetic Foot and Wound Center can determine the best combination of treatments for you. Call or schedule an appointment online to learn more or walk-in today.