The National Wound Care Strategy Programme (NWCSP) continues to make great progress. I appreciate many of you may have signed up to the stakeholder group and have been questioning our silence, but I can promise you that we have been working very hard behind the scenes to be able to provide you with tangible outcomes following your feedback. We have just finalised the ‘clinical navigation tool’ for all lower limb wounds, which is currently out for consultation with the registered stakeholder group. It is hoped that implementation of the tool will provide a consistent approach for all patients, irrespective of where they live in the UK and who their service provider is. The tool addresses all lower limb wounds, including diabetic foot ulceration, leg ulceration and pressure ulceration on the heel as it has been recognised that one of the fundamental issues is the correct ‘labelling’ of patients … View PDF
Tag: Leg ulcers
Venous stasis ulcers, arterial ulcers, diabetic neuropathic ulcers, pressure …
Are You Confident of the Diagnosis?
Leg ulcers are skin lesions with full-thickness loss of epidermis and dermis on the lower extremities. Among a wide variety of etiologies for chronic leg ulcers, four common types are venous stasis ulcers, arterial ulcers, diabetic neuropathic ulcers, and pressure ulcers. By definition, chronic leg ulcers last greater than 6 weeks. Acute ulcers such as traumatic wounds undergo normal healing in healthy patients without the need for further treatment. As a result, only chronic leg ulcers will be discussed here.
Patients with venous leg ulcers commonly complain of swelling and aching of the legs that is worse at the end of the day and improves with leg elevation. The medial lower leg is the most common site. The borders of venous ulcers are typically saucer-shaped, initially with a shallow wound base. The surrounding skin often exhibits pitting edema, induration, hemosiderosis, varicosities, lipodermatosclerosis, atrophie blanche, and/or stasis dermatitis read more