Diagnosis and treatment of diabetic foot infections: adopted IWGDF guidline

Diabetic foot infection is the most common complication of diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) leading to amputation. The treatment requires special attention to disease conditions, proper diagnosis, appropriate sampling for cultures, careful selection of antibiotics, rapid determination of the patient’s need for surgical intervention, and wound care. Clearly a systematic approach or, if possible, an evidence-based approach by using clinical guidelines about diabetic foot infections will lead to better outcomes. In this regard, this article aims to adopt the IWGDF clinical practice guideline on DFU infection.

In this study, the adoption of the international evidence-based clinical guidelines on the DFU infection was carried out using the ADAPTE methodology, which involved three stages of setup, adoption, and finalization. AGREE II tool was used to evaluate the quality of the selected clinical guideline.

The results of this adopted clinical guideline according to the national facilities and access to equipment are described with 26 recommendations along with related reasons for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic foot ulcer infections. The recommendation categorized into six different categories including Classification/ Diagnosis, Osteomyelitis, Assessing severity, Microbiological considerations, Surgical treatment, Antimicrobial therapy.

The mentioned recommendations in the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic foot ulcer infections extracted based on the methodology of systematic review studies. Actually the opinion of experts have been prepared and adjusted according to the limitations, equipment and facilities in the country. But in general, there are some challenges in diabetic foot infections should be considered as well. So monitoring the treatment of infection, optimal duration of antibiotic treatment, optimal treatment of infection in low-income countries, time and type of imaging studies, selection of medical or surgical treatments and hospitalization conditions are some of these challenges. However the definition and practical clinical application for the concept of bacterial bioburden of the wound for wound healing, evaluating the cost-effectiveness of new technologies in improving treatment and appropriate interpretation of microbiological (genotypic) microbiological tests are important too.