The care of individuals with diabetic foot ulcers is costly and requires multiple hospital visits. Inadequate care leads to serious complications and a high risk of lower extremity amputation. In this review, we aimed at evaluating whether telemedicine can be effective in diabetic foot patient care. We searched Medline through Embase and PubMed and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) for relevant studies, published up to April 2017. The studies were summarized and discussed in a narrative method and a meta-analysis of 2 controlled trials was conducted using the fixed-effects model. The main outcomes, assessed in the retrieved studies were the healing rate and satisfaction of patients and health care personnel. Most of the studies showed that implementing telemonitoring programs increased the rate of complete ulcer healing, while the patients were highly satisfied. Two trials providing data on 213 patients on telemedicine and 301 patients on usual care were included for meta-analysis. Subjects in telemedicine, as well as control groups had statistically similar healing time (43 vs 45 days; P = .83), healing time ratio adjusted for age (1 vs 1.4; P = .1), unhealed ulcers or loss to follow-up (3 of 20 vs 7 of 120; P = .13), and amputations (12 of 193 vs 14 of 182; P = .59). Subjects in the telemedicine group experienced a significantly higher mortality rate (8 of 193 vs 1 of 181; P = .0001) due to unexplained factors. No adverse events were attributed to using the telemedicine technology. The odds of complete ulcer healing were statistically similar between the telemedicine group and controls (odds ratio = 0.86; 95% CI = 0.57-1.33; P = .53). Telemedicine care is promising for the management of diabetic foot patients as the results were comparable with usual care. However, further large-scale studies need to be undertaken before it can be implemented widely.

Diabetic foot infection is a common diabetic complication that may end in lower limb amputation if not treated properly. We performed this systematic review to assess the clinical efficacy of different antibiotic regimens, whether systemic or topical, in the treatment of moderate to severe diabetic foot infections. We searched Medline, Web of Science, SCOPUS, Cochrane CENTRAL, and ScienceDirect for randomized controlled trials that evaluated the efficacy of antibiotic regimens in moderate to severe diabetic foot infections. The primary outcome of interest was the clinical efficacy (cure/improvement rates) of the regimens. We included 16 trials (4,158 patients) in this review, from which we extracted 10 comparisons: some trials compared systemic antibiotics to each other, others compared systemic to topical agents, while one study compared the combined topical and systemic agents to systemic antibiotics alone. Qualitative analysis of the findings of these studies showed that: (1) pipracillin/tazobactam was superior to ertapenem in severe infections (clinical resolution rate: 91.5% compared with PIP/TAZ 97.2%, p ≤ 0.04), but had similar efficacy in moderate infections, (2) ertapenem was more effective than tigecycline in moderate to severe infections (absolute difference -5.5, [95% CI -11.0, 0.1]), (3) the adjuvant use of topical agents with systemic antibiotics improved the outcomes, compared with systemic antibiotics alone (p = 0.024), (4) the rates of recurrence and re-ulceration were significantly lower in patients using the amino-penicillin regimen, compared with those using oral/intravenous ofloxacin, and (5) lower rates of complications accompanied the imipenem/cilastatin regimen, compared with the pipracillin/tazobactam regimen (p = 0.13). In conclusion, data from the included studies showed better results for ertapenem when compared with tigecycline; however, it was inferior to pipracillin/tazobactam in severe infections. The adjuvant use of topical agents improves the efficacy of systemic antibiotics in diabetic foot infection.