What is an ulcer?

So an ulcer quite simply is any break in the skin, so any lesion in the skin that's causing a wound. I mean obviously if you have a cut or an injury like that, that's not technically ulcer, but anything that's sort of an erosion or a break in the skin. And ulcers can come in two main forms. They can be neuropathic, so people don't feel them and they generally are on a weight-bearing area. They have a halo of surrounding callus. They're often fairly shallow and they often will stay fairly chronic for quite a long time and are often, because they're associated with load, with pressure, as I've said on a weight-bearing area, we often need to offload so we'll be applying some sort of offloading device like an orthotic, maybe an insole in your shoe, maybe something like a casted device that a podiatrist or a plaster technician will apply bespoke for your foot to take the pressure off. You can have an ischemic ulcer which is an ulcer associated with circulation problems with ischemia so you're not getting the blood flow to an area and that area will start to break down and ulcerate and ischemic ulcers tend to be uncomfortable they tend to be painful because they're associated with a loss of circulation so sometimes people will complain of pain in the area that they have the ulcer and maybe in their legs when they're walking they make they may complain of calf pain and they may complain of pain in bed at night or pain when they're sitting in a chair and that's called rest pain or they can have a combination of the two and we call those neurovascular ulcers or neuro ischemic ulcers where people have an element of neuropathy and some problem with their circulation and again with both types of ulcers it's very important that you have early treatment So if you think you're having, you've got an ulcer, if you're getting any exudate from an area of your foot, if you're getting any oozing or weeping, any fluid coming out of any part of your foot, if there's any wounds that suddenly present that you're concerned about, if you've got any hotness, redness or swelling, that you see your GP or you see your emergency practitioner or you go to the walk-in centre or you see your podiatrist and see whether for a start you might need some antibiotics if you have an infection, but you might need some debridement of that wound and you might need some further treatment in terms of dressings and a dressings programme in order to optimise the healing.