People with medical conditions that make them susceptible to chronic wounds need to take special care of their legs, feet, and hands to try to prevent, and seek immediate medical attention if they are injured so that proper wound care can be implemented. Good wound care practices include control of infection, appropriate weight off-loading, maintenance of wound moisture balance, and the surgical removal of dead tissue.

Wounds Can Have Serious Consequences

Even with the proper precautions, however, some patients cannot avoid serious wounds due to the advanced stage of their disease. For example, patients with diabetes or peripheral arterial disease may require revscularization —also called peripheral bypass—to restore blood flow to the legs. In peripheral bypass surgery, a surgeon uses a graft to reroute blood flow around a blocked portion of an artery or vein. Another option is to prop open the diseased artery with an expandable mesh tube called a stent.

A sizeable proportion of CLI patients, however, have such severe disease that revascularization is not an option. Among these patients, more than 40% will require a major amputation, and 20% will die within 6 months.² Fortunately, new medical advances in the field of therapeutic angiogenesis—the growth of new capillary blood vessels—are helping to cure chronic wounds and prevent amputations.