Have Diabetes, Cracks In Feet, Oozing Yellow Fluid. Is Pain And Drainage From The Wound Normal?
Last few months his left feet develope a wound opening due to dry skin and cracks. We managed to heal the other cracks without any problem. Unfortunately, one of the crack has caught infection derived from accidentally soaked his cracked feet on wet floor in the toilet few weeks ago.
Debridement has been done at our local hospital. Just recently, the wound is painful and light yellowish fluid(pus) coming out of the wounded area. We cleanse and dressing for his wounded feet 2-3 times a day with saline solution then alcohol and apply betadine ointment and dressing with sterile bandage. Is the pain and drainage from the wound normal? Does it mean healing or is a sign of infection? There is no swelling, wound seems smaller, the surrounding of the wound is drying and getting hard but the wound is draining pus after sometime completed the dressing.
My father can't feel pain or anything for many years already due to his diabetic condition and damage to the nerves, so he didn't complain of any pain before but he's starting to feel pulling pain and i find pus drainage from his wound started a few days ago. Looking forward to your reply and suggestion. Thanks! From E. XXXXXXX
Welcome to healthcare Magic,
From your description I understood your father has diabetic foot ulcer , peripheral neuropathy( sensory deficits ) with vascular impairment ( ischemia, necrosis ) that occur in late stage as a complication of diabetes. Normally these ulcers has slowly healing evolution and untreated adequately can lead to more sever complication such abscess, joint sepsis, osteomyelitis and even gangrene ( that required amputation ). If while dressing you found present pus , then definitely he has infection and to prevent complications and accelerate healing process I would recommend as a local therapy maintain moist but not wet wound bed, continue daily dressing with antiseptics recommended by your Doctor ( but avoid alcohol due to high potency can interfere with microcirculation and healing process ), review local antiseptics creams ( in most cases creams don’t allow to dry wound ), and add oral therapy with antibiotics that will help improve condition and fight infections, ( local therapy only is not sufficiently ). In sever cases if there no improvements, now recently appeared new therapies with bioingineric recombinant human platelet derived growth factor and human dermal epidermal factor that are efctive and accelerate healing process. All these aspects you have to discuss with your Doctor that will explain details.
I wish you and your father good luck and speedy recovery,
Hope this helps and I have answered your query. If you have additional queries don’t hesitate to ask.
Best Regards,
Dr.Mihail