How to Identify a Developing Pressure Wound in Your Foot 

If you’ve never heard of a pressure wound, perhaps you know it by its more common name, bed sores, which affect about 2.5 million Americans each year. That common name came about because pressure wounds tend to develop in people who are bed ridden, but that doesn’t paint the whole picture.

From where Dr. Thomas Rambacher and the team at Foot Ankle Leg Wound Care Orange County stand, pressure wounds are injuries that can turn foot, ankle, and leg wounds into ongoing and limb-threatening problems.

Given our belief that no part of your foot is too small to save, we want to look at signs of a pressure wound in your foot so that you can take quick action. The bottom line is that the earlier we can treat a pressure wound in your foot, the better your outcome. So, let's dive in.

How a pressure wound develops

Let’s first discuss how pressure wounds develop in your feet. Of the overall burden of pressure wounds, up to 25% develop in the heel, ankle, and lower leg.

Pressure wounds anywhere on your body occur when pressure on the area is higher than your body’s ability to pump blood through. So, using the bed sore example, if you’re in bed for a prolonged period, you may have too much pressure on your tailbone, which is where most pressure wounds develop.

For pressure wounds in your feet, these can occur due to pressure, friction, and edema (fluid buildup in your lower limbs).

As blood struggles to get through, the tissue in the area can weaken and eventually die off, leaving you with an open wound that won’t heal well thanks to the same thing that brought it about: lack of blood flow. And when a pressure wound won’t heal, infection can set in and wreak havoc.

Signs of a pressure wound

Now let’s walk this discussion back a little and go over the four stages of a pressure wound to help you identify when you should seek our help.

Stage 1

During the first stage of a pressure wound, there might be a change in color in your skin, though this is easier to identify in lighter skin tones. During this initial stage, there’s no open wound, but you might feel some tenderness in the area.

Stage 2

This stage can look a lot like a blister. You notice redness beneath some loose skin and this skin can even come all the way loose, leaving a shallow wound behind.

Stage 3

During this stage, the wound goes deeper than the top layers of your skin and into the fatty layers.

Stage 4

The pressure wound travels through all three layers of your skin to the point where muscle, tendon, and/or bone tissues are exposed.

In a perfect world, you come to see us during the first two stages of a pressure wound, which allows us time to get the wound going in the other direction. That said, we’re set up to treat pressure wounds in your feet at every stage. There’s a lot that we can do during each stage to save your foot from infection and even amputation.

If you’re at all on the fence, please err on the side of caution and come see us for an evaluation of your potential pressure wound. To set that in motion, please call our office in Mission Viejo, California, at 949-832-6018 or request an appointment online today.