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Nuclear Medicine Imaging of Diabetic Foot Infections

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Nuclear Medicine in Infectious Diseases

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Abstract

Diabetic foot infections represent a severe complication of long-standing diabetes. If not adequately recognized, the infection could spread from a foot ulcer to the bone, thus causing osteomyelitis (OM) that exposes the patients to the risk of amputation, bacteraemia/septicaemia and death. One of the most difficult aspects in the evaluation of a diabetic foot is to differentiate between OM, soft tissue infection (STI) and Charcot foot because these three conditions require very different therapeutic approaches. Despite the correct diagnosis could be achieved with the isolation of the pathogen from bone or soft tissues, it would be desirable to have non-invasive test able to diagnose and localize an infection with high accuracy. In this chapter, we examine the pros and cons of NM modalities in the approach at diabetic foot disorders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Medicine Unit, Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and of Translational Medicine, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Chiara Lauri & Alberto Signore

  2. Diabetic Foot Unit, Department Systems Medicine, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Luigi Uccioli

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  1. Chiara Lauri
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  2. Luigi Uccioli
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Alberto Signore

  2. Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Andor W. J. M. Glaudemans

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Lauri, C., Uccioli, L., Signore, A. (2020). Nuclear Medicine Imaging of Diabetic Foot Infections. In: Signore, A., Glaudemans, A. (eds) Nuclear Medicine in Infectious Diseases. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25494-0_11

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