New global offloading treatment pathway published

A new offloading treatment pathway has just been published with the new IWGDF offloading guidelines. And we dare say this may become your official ‘offloading cheat sheet’ for diabetic foot ulcers (DFU).

The new global IWGDF offloading guideline covers 36 pages of everything known to (wo)man on offloading treatments for DFU. It then simplifies all this into 9 clear evidence-based recommendations on which offloading treatments to use for people with nearly every DFU type imaginable. The new pathway then incorporates all these recommendations into a simple one-page figure. And you can find this offloading pathway figure on the last page of the IWGDF offloading guidelines here.

The pathway guides you through your decisions on which evidence-based offloading treatment to use depending on your patient’s DFU location, infection and ischaemia status. It even factors in contraindications, what to do if your patient won’t use the treatment or it just doesn’t work. And just in case you’re wondering, the first-choice offloading treatment recommended for people with a plantar DFU is a non-removable knee-high offloading device. And this can be either a removable knee-high walker made non-removable or a total contact cast depending on your patient.

And lastly, if you happen to like this new one-page offloading pathway, then you have a humble podiatrist from Brisbane called Emily to thank for the idea and perhaps changing the offloading world! But, if you don’t like it then you have Prof Sicco Bus to blame instead (only joking on the blame).

Otherwise, keep watching this space for much more on the IWGDF guidelines and how it affects you over the coming months.