Diabetic foot ulcers and infection.

If someone has a diabetic foot ulcer, there's an increased risk of infection because the skin is a really good barrier to prevent infection into the skin. When the skin is intact, it's almost impossible to get any infection into the skin. But when the skin is broken, when that barrier is broken by an ulcer, bacteria can get in really easily. People often think when they get an infection in their foot that they've done something wrong that they've caused the infection but but the answer in almost all cases is the infection is simply caused by breaking the skin which means that bacteria which live on our skin if you swab my skin today you'll find lots of bacteria on my skin because they live on all of our skin and when the when the skin is broken bacteria can get in and that can cause infections so it's not usually an infection it's not usually caused by anything anyone's done but keeping a clean dry dressing on which is changed regularly as directed by the team is important and if an infection does occur in an ulcer, the sign someone will usually get could be pain or increased pain, although of course that can be absent with nerve damage, redness around the ulcer, increased heat around the ulcer and pus, yellow fluid coming out of the ulcer. If those things should happen, it would be important to see someone quickly who can take a sample of the ulcer to see what bacteria are causing the infection and to start some antibiotics.