News & Events: Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Michael S. Conte, MD, chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery at UCSF, and one of nation's leading vascular surgeons, was awarded a 4-year, $1.7M U01 grant by the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a unit of the NIH, to fund one of 6 national centers in the Diabetic Foot Consortium.  Conte and podiatrist Alexander Reyzelman, DPM, a co-investigator on the grant, are co-Directors of the UCSF Center for Limb Preservation. The NIDDK research is being carried out via a network of Clinical Research Units (CRUs). The UCSF Diabetic Foot CRU is [...]

Dr. Alexander Reyzelman treats diabetes patient Michael Rubenstein. Photo by David Gorn/CALmatters The word "amputation" threw a chill down Michael Rubenstein's spine. The 67-year-old diabetic from San Mateo still winces at the thought. "They told me I'd need to cut it off right about here," he said, sawing his hand across his left shin. Two months after that diagnosis, he's on an exam table at the Center for Limb Preservation at UC San Francisco, his leg still whole, the threat of gangrene and amputation gone and his mood a lot less bleak and fearful. "Yeah, it turns out I didn't need [...]

In his 33-year career as a conceptual artist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, John Maduell illustrated futuristic technologies few others could imagine. But he never envisioned the toll diabetes and vascular disease would take on his body—or that one day he might lose his legs because of these problems.  Maduell's troubles started two years ago when he developed a diabetic ulcer on his left foot. "Before I knew it, I was in the hospital, with three toes amputated," he says. Still, the wound didn't heal, and Maduell, who now lives and paints in Modesto, was told removing the [...]