Offloading Strategies on Wound Healing Among Patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcer

Abstract

Diabetes can develop foot ulcer and foot pain, but good foot care can help to prevent complication, apart from that we used offloading strategies for patients with diabetic foot ulcers prevent complication. Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of offloading strategies on wound healing among patients with diabetic foot ulcer. Design: Quasi experimental where Non-equivalent post-test only control group design. Setting: Sri Manickam Hospital and Sugam Hospital, Rasipuram. Thirty diabetic foot ulcer patients, fulfilling the inclusion criteria were selected by purposive sampling technique. The inclusion criteria included patients with diabetic foot ulcer such as type 1 & 2 diabetes mellitus with the age group above 40 years and both the gender, based on Wagner Classification system Grade 0 & 1. A study was conducted with 30 patients with 15 were experimental group and 15 patients were control group. The Bates - Jenson wound assessment tool was used. Results. From the findings of the study, it can be concluded that the overall area wise comparison between experimental and control post-test 2 mean score (16.53± 2.17, 25.87±3.227) and mean percentage difference was 14%. It seems that offloading strategies was effective among patients with diabetic foot ulcer. Unpaired’ t test score was 9.21 at the level of significant (P< 0.0001). Extremely significant difference was found post-test 2 score of experimental groups. No significant association between the wound healing and their demographic variables. From the findings of the study, it can be concluded that the highest percentage of patients were in age group of 40 - 45 years. Most of them were males, 80% were no Habits, 73 % were heart diseases, and 60% were toe region of diabetic foot. The offloading strategies were highly effective on wound healing among patients with Diabetic foot ulcer.