Jing Hong, Qi-Qi Huang, Wen-Yue Liu, Xiang Hu, Fei-Fei Jiang, Ze-Ru Xu, Fei-Xia Shen, and Hong Zhu
Patients with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are considered to be with an excess risk of all-cause mortality (1), facing a 5-year mortality as high as 30.5% which is comparable to cancer (2). Additionally, the mortality of patients with DFUs is more than 2-folds higher than patients with diabetes but without DFUs (3). The excess all-cause mortality in patients with DFUs cannot fully be explained by traditional cardiovascular risk factors (4). The importance of other factors, such as nutritional status, needs to be further elucidated.
Patients with DFUs, especially those with Wagner grade 4 and 5, were more vulnerable to malnutrition compared to patients without DFUs (5). Malnutrition was found to be associated with higher complications, longer hospital stays, and increased mortality in hospitalized patients (6). Malnutrition is often ignored but modifiable. Identifying patients at risk of malnutrition is important … read more