Why Diabetic Wounds Are a Serious Matter

For the 38.4 million people in the United States who have diabetes (that’s more than 11% of the adult population!), life can have some serious challenges. Topping the list of complications from diabetes are wounds or ulcers that struggle to heal, and they affect about one-third of people with this chronic disease. 

One of the many issues we successfully treat at Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center in Aledo, Texas, are diabetic wounds. Under the care of Dr. Leon Tio, we can jump-start the healing process to get you on the road to better health.

While hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a highly effective treatment, let’s step back and review why diabetic wounds are so serious in the first place.

A matter of circulation and nerve damage

As you already know, when you have diabetes, you have unregulated levels of glucose in your bloodstream thanks to insufficient insulin production and insulin resistance. These higher-than-normal blood sugar levels can damage your blood vessels and compromise your circulation, especially in areas that are far from your heart. 

Nearly half of diabetics have peripheral artery disease, which reduces blood flow to the lower limbs. As a result, most diabetic wounds and ulcers develop in the lower legs, ankles, and feet, which are areas that need to fight distance and gravity to get the resources they need.

Another reason why diabetic wounds tend to affect your lower limbs is because these areas are far more vulnerable to peripheral neuropathy, or nerve damage. And when you have nerve damage in your lower limbs, you may not feel when there’s a wound.

Understanding wound healing

When you injure yourself, your body jumps into action and kicks off a four-stage healing process:

1. Homeostasis — stopping the bleeding
2. Inflammation — the creation of a healing environment
3. Cell proliferation — to rebuild damaged tissues
4. Remodeling — the new tissues take on their final forms

What each of these stages relies on most is good circulation. Your blood carries everything your body needs to heal, including platelets for clotting, immune cells, and, most important, oxygen.

Diabetes and wound healing

Now let’s bring everything together to illustrate why we’re so concerned about diabetic wounds. 

If the circulation in your lower limbs is compromised and you have a wound or ulcer, it struggles to get past the first stage of healing because it doesn’t have the resources it needs to heal.

The longer a wound remains unhealed, the more at risk you are for infection, and once infection takes hold, you can’t fight it successfully thanks to a lack of resources.

To put some numbers to this dangerous sequence of events, half of diabetic ulcers become infected and 20% of these infections lead to amputation in the feet, either partial or whole amputation.

Delivering resources through hyperbaric therapy

When a diabetic ulcer doesn't have access to oxygen and healing resources, we can make up the difference with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. With this approach, we deliver 100% oxygen into the damaged tissues and cells to help them fight infection and get through the four stages of healing.

If you want to learn whether your diabetic ulcer can benefit from hyperbaric oxygen therapy, contact Clover Oxygen Hyperbarics and Wound Center to schedule a consultation sooner rather than later.