It has been demonstrated that Vitamin D (25(OH)D) deficiency is associated with diabetes and with diabetic neuropathy. Some reports stated that vitamin D deficiency is also associated with diabetic foot ulcer and/or infection. Knowing the beneficial effect of vitamin D on wound healing, a quantitative evidence synthesis is needed to look for such association. Medline, Embase, Scopus, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar were searched for from inception. The outcomes were set to be either the serum 25(OH)D level or the prevalence of patients with 25(OH)D with severe deficiency. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria with 1,644 patients; 817 diabetic patients with foot ulcers and 827 patients having diabetes without foot complications. The weighted mean differences was −0.93 (95% CI = −1.684 to −0.174, I2 = 97.8%, p = 0.01). The odds ratio of having severe vitamin D deficiency was 3.6 (95% CI = 2.940 to 4.415, I2 = 40.9%, p < 0.0001), in favor of the foot group. The quality of the included studies was found to be good to excellent. Diabetic foot complications are associated with significantly lower levels of vitamin D. Patients with diabetic ulcers or diabetic infection are at higher risk of bearing severe vitamin D deficiency. Knowing the beneficial effect of vitamin D on wound healing, it is likely that recognizing and supplementing with vitamin D could prevent or improve the outcomes of diabetic foot complications.
Conservative treatment is the basis for diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) management, whereas surgical treatment is usually reserved for patients with failed, recurrent, or nonresponsive infected wounds. However, many reports demonstrated good to excellent results following surgery. Evidence synthesis on surgical offloading techniques and clear guidelines regarding the timing of surgery are lacking. The present study aimed to investigate the evidence behind surgical offloading techniques and propose a cutoff time for surgical indication following failed conservative treatment of neuropathic diabetic forefoot ulcers. Electronic databases were searched from inception to identify the best evidence level articles related to non-vascular surgical treatment of DFUs, such as metatarsal head resection, resection arthroplasty, metatarsal osteotomy, Achilles tendon lengthening, gastrocnemius recession, and flexor tenotomy, that have been employed for managing DFUs. Based on the highest level of evidence available, surgery was found to generate better values than standard conservative care for all outcomes except for the transfer rate. In particular, surgical bony offloading procedures demonstrated significantly better outcomes than standard conservative nonsurgical care in terms of higher healing rates, shorter healing durations, and lower recurrence rates. Moreover, 96% of DFUs healed in <1 month following surgical bony offloading, whereas 68% of ulcers healed within 3 months after standard care. The findings could challenge the classical guidelines of DFU management. This evidence-based review indicates that surgical offloading could be used more often and be proposed earlier during the course of ulcer management. The results imply that a period of 12 weeks could be considered a reasonable cutoff value to consider surgical treatment for patients with nonhealing DFUs.
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