Diabetes-related foot infections reduced through new imaging technique

A new study has found that combining two different imaging agents with accurate molecular imaging techniques can offer patients with type 2 diabetes an effective screening method to deal with foot infections.
Since diabetes can bring problems such as nerve damage and reduced blood flow to the feet, people suffering from the metabolic condition are open to possible infection. This new research involved 191 patients who had molecular imaging with the two imaging agents and were scanned with single photon emission computed tomography and computed tomography (SPECT/CT), which provides images with anatomical and functional details about the body.
The findings, which included 84 cases of infected bone, 93 infections of the soft tissue, 25 combinations of both and 25 other pathologies, offered further evidence that dual isotope SPECT/CT is a viable way to evaluate diabetes-related soft-tissue infection and osteomyelitis. It is hoped the study will help reduce the amount of necessary amputations from infected feet through the use of the dual isotope.
Sherif Heiba from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York commented “As a result of this study we have concluded that dual isotope SPECT/CT is an important method for detecting infection in diabetic patients who might otherwise receive unnecessarily aggressive treatment such as amputation .”