Yesterday afternoon, a patient asked the same question in a chat about how long it takes to develop rotten feet when you have diabetes. I generally recall that there are quite a lot of patients or family members who are concerned about this type of problem. There is no definite time, because it depends on the patient’s blood sugar control, age, medical history, personal physical condition and lifestyle. Some patients have rotten feet as soon as they are diagnosed with diabetes, while others have been intact for decades. Therefore, no generalizations can be made. Usually, lower limb neuropathy, vasculopathy, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, trauma, smoking and alcohol consumption can significantly shorten the course of diabetic foot. If detected and treated early, the appearance of diabetic foot can be delayed or avoided to some extent. But this is also in the ideal situation, where we all can control it well. The reality is that most patients’ blood sugar control is less optimistic, so that the percentage of onset will be correspondingly higher and the time will be shorter. According to a previous statistic, the lifetime incidence of diabetic foot patients is as high as 15% to 20%. The formation of diabetic foot is also often a concentrated manifestation of poor general condition, and the more severe the foot disease, the worse the general condition of the patient. Many of our severe patients will be accompanied by symptoms such as cardiovascular disease, nephropathy, and severe anemia. Moreover, in the current situation, because of the treatment method, the amputation rate of diabetic foot is very high, more than 50% of the patients with non-traumatic amputation are diabetic patients every year, and the survival rate of patients with conventional treatment for 5 years is only 44%. Compared with non-diabetic patients, the incidence of amputation increases 40 times, and more than half of the amputees need a second amputation within 5 years. Many patients lose the right to walk freely very early because of diabetic rotten feet. I would like to remind you that you must control your blood sugar, blood pressure and blood lipids to meet the standards under the guidance of your doctor to prevent the complications of diabetes as early as possible to avoid its serious damage to your body.