When to See a Specialist for a Non-Healing Foot Wound

Life is full of cuts and scrapes and you take for granted that your body will jump into action and make everything right again. Sure, you may be left with a scar as a reminder, but the wound is ancient history.

Well, this isn’t the case for the 6.5 million Americans who are living with a chronic wound at any given time. Included in this number are the 1.6 million diabetic foot ulcers that develop each year in the United States, half of which will become infected.

At the heart of what double board-certified wound specialist Dr. Thomas Rambacher and the team at Foot Ankle Leg Wound Care Orange County do is treat slow- and non-healing foot, ankle, and leg wounds. In this blog post, we dive into the healing process, when to recognize that there's an issue, and when to seek our help.

Wound healing at a glance

Let’s first take a look at how your body sets about healing itself when there’s damage. When this happens, your body instantly kicks off a four-stage healing cascade, including:

1. Stasis

Platelets in your blood arrive on the scene and stop any bleeding by forming a clot.

2. Inflammatory

During this phase, your body calls on macrophages, a specialized type of white blood cell that protects your wound against infection. These macrophages release growth factors that lead to cell signaling and inflammation.

3. Cell proliferation

The growth factors signal to stem cells and other cells to come in and proliferate in order to rebuild and repair the damaged tissues.

4. Tissue remodeling

Your body puts the finishing touches on the new tissues and adds strength. Bear in mind that, after about three months, the wound will be at about 80% of its previous strength and it may stop there or continue to get stronger.

When foot wounds don’t heal

Any bump along this healing path is one that can derail the entire process, which is what typically occurs when you have a slow- or non-healing foot wound.

For people who have lower extremity nerve and circulation issues, such as the more than 38 million Americans who have diabetes, chronic wounds are common.

What the four-stage healing process in your body relies on most is circulation. Your blood vessels are the main conduits of healing resources, so if they’re compromised, so, too, is your healing.

As a result, this inability to heal quickly leaves you vulnerable to infection. Playing this all the way out, the infection can spread and lead to amputation, which is why prompt attention to a potentially problematic foot wound is imperative.

Signs of slow-healing foot wounds

So, to answer the question we pose in the title, we want you to come see us at the very first signs of a potentially slow-healing wound. 

This means monitoring your wound or ulcer very closely. There’s no single timeline for wound healing, but we can say it should always progress. So, if you’re not seeing any progression after a week, this is potentially problematic.

Obviously, if your wound goes in the opposite direction and becomes more painful, red, and/or inflamed, these are signs of brewing infection and you need to see us sooner rather than later.

The bottom line is that anyone with a known circulatory or nerve issue in their lower limbs needs to be extra vigilant about foot wounds. In fact, we want you to be so vigilant that you don’t wait for a wound to become non-healing — we want you to see us if it’s healing slowly.

So, we suggest that you always err on the side of caution when it comes to foot wounds and if you’re at all unsure, please don’t hesitate to call our office in Mission Viejo, California, at 949-832-6018 or request an appointment online today.