Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: The diabetic foot osteoarthropathy is defined as a progressive painless arthropathy of one or more joints due to an underlying neurological injury. It is the bed of complications and severe foot infections and involves the functional prognosis. Through observations of patients we report the difficulty of management of wounds on foot osteoarthropathy.

Observation: It is five diabetic patients hospitalized in our department with an array of severe infection of the feet on Charcot foot. All patients with longstanding diabetes at the stage of microvascular complications, severe peripheral neuropathy was present in all cases. Clinical examination revealed deformities type Charcot foot associated with infected wounds, signs of frank infection, and inflammation. Bone involvement was frequent. The treatment consisted on: discharge, antibiotics and surgical debridement in some cases. The surgical treatment was conservative and was limited to a toe amputation. The average hospital stay is 45 days.

Discussion: The Charcot osteoarthropathy is a serious complication of diabetic neuropathy. The diagnosis is often delayed at the stage of final major deformations on which are grafted trophic disorders, recurrent severe infections, and osteomyelitis. Its management is cumbersome and costly. However, only an early diagnosis followed by prompt intervention may limit the progression to foot deformities, or amputation.