The 2015 IWGDF guidance on the prevention and management of foot problems in diabetes

Dear Editors,

We were pleased to read the editorial Dr Jones and you wrote on the 2015 IWGDF Guidance in the August issue of the International Wound Journal. We were, however, surprised that you did not include a reference to the Guidance and Summary documents that you cited. While referencing source documents is usual for any scientific article, we think it is especially important for clinicians to read these Guidance papers in order to implement them in their daily care of patients. In fact, implementation of the knowledge we now have on managing foot problems in diabetes was the topic of a 1‐day session that immediately preceded the International Symposium on the Diabetic Foot.

The Guidance documents will be published as a special issue in Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews, but not until the November issue. But, they (and the systematic reviews supporting them) are currently freely available to all at the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot Website (www.iwgdf.org/guidelines). We request that you consider publishing this information, or perhaps the following paragraph in response to your editorial.

The five 2015 IWGDF Guidance documents on the prevention and management of foot problems in diabetes and the Summary Guidance for Daily Practice referred to in the editorial by Jones and Harding 1 will be published in a special issue of Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews in November 2015 (see 2 and further Guidance documents in this special issue). The seven systematic reviews that contributed to these evidence‐based Guidance documents will also be published in this issue. However, ‘online first’ copies of these documents are currently freely available at www.iwgdf.org/guidelines. We encourage all professionals working in the field of diabetes‐related foot problems to read these documents, and we hope they will implement the evidence‐based recommendations to improve their daily clinical practice.

Karel Bakker1, Jan Apelqvist2,3, Ben A Lipsky4, Jaap J Van Netten5 & Nicolaas C Schaper6
1International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot, Heemstede, The Netherlands
2Department of Endocrinology, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden
3Division for Clinical Sciences, University of Lund, Malmö, Sweden
4Division of Medical Sciences, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
5Department of Surgery, Ziekenhuisgroep Twente, Almelo and Hengelo, The Netherlands
6Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, Maastricht University Hospital, Research Schools CARIM and CAPHRI, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Jv.netten@zgt.nl