1.What is diabetic foot? Diabetic foot is the foot of diabetic patients who have lost sensation due to nerve degeneration and combined infection due to tissue ischemia and necrosis. It includes neuropathy, vasculopathy and ulcer infection, but tissue ischemia caused by peripheral arterial stenosis and occlusion is the main cause and danger of diabetic foot. Therefore, prevention and treatment in terms of lower limb ischemia is the focus of diabetic foot prevention and treatment. 2.What is the incidence of diabetic foot? According to statistics, about 20% of diabetic patients in the United States may develop diabetic foot ulcer formation every year, and patients with amputation due to diabetic foot account for more than 50% of non-traumatic amputation, of which 30% are required to perform amputation above the thigh, while 50% of patients with one side of amputation eventually lose the opposite limb. At present, the situation of diabetic foot in China is gradually similar to that of the United States. 3.What are the main clinical manifestations of diabetic foot? The early clinical manifestations of diabetic foot mainly include numbness of the foot, cold skin, and a feeling of weakness, discomfort or pain in the lower leg after activity (intermittent claudication); resting pain in the foot in the middle stage; foot ulceration, gangrene and infection in the late stage. 4.How can diabetic foot be predicted early? Only 1 out of 10 patients with early diabetic foot showed typical symptoms. Since most patients do not have symptoms of limb ischemia, or the symptoms of intermittent claudication are atypical, when there is numbness of the foot, cold skin and a sense of weakness, discomfort or pain in the lower leg after activity, it is often mistaken for senile calcium deficiency or degenerative degeneration of the bone and joint. An “ankle-brachial index” test, commonly used in vascular surgery, is now considered a simple, scientific and accurate test with a specificity of 99% for the diagnosis of early diabetic foot. The American Diabetes Association recommends that diabetic patients over 50 years of age or those with a history of diabetes for more than 10 years should have their ABI routinely tested for early diagnosis, prevention and treatment. 5.How to prevent diabetic foot? A: Patients with diabetes should actively control blood sugar, and if combined with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, atherosclerosis and other diseases, they should also be actively treated and controlled to slow down the occurrence and development of diabetic lower limb atherosclerosis occlusive disease. Smokers should strictly quit smoking, because nicotine can cause vascular elastic fiber fracture, vascular intimal hyperplasia, intimal non-smooth, thrombosis, aggravating the occurrence and development of diabetic foot. 6.What are the treatment methods of diabetic foot? A: The treatment of diabetic foot mainly has the following aspects: (1) drug therapy: blood sugar control drugs, vasodilator drugs and anti-platelet drugs. (2) Surgical treatment: including the reconstruction of arterial blood flow in the lower limbs and trauma treatment. (3) Endovascular treatment: including balloon dilation, stent implantation, and subintimal angioplasty. (4) Autologous bone marrow stem cell transplantation: to promote ischemic lower extremity vascular neovascularization and production of vascular endothelial growth factor, thereby increasing blood perfusion. The combination of several methods depending on the condition will provide better treatment results.