American Podiatric Medical Association
View all recommendations from this societyAugust 1, 2017
Don’t culture or treat clinically uninfected lower extremity wounds with systemic antibiotics.
Uninfected wounds are contaminated with surface flora and will yield false positive culture results. Furthermore, wounds that are not clinically infected do not require antibiotics and the unnecessary prescription of antibiotics may have harmful side effects and lead to further antibiotic resistance.
These items are provided solely for informational purposes and are not intended as a substitute for consultation with a medical professional. Patients with any specific questions about the items on this list or their individual situation should consult their physician.
How The List Was Created
(1–5) The American Podiatric Medical Association’s (APMA) Clinical Practice Advisory Committee, consisting of APMA members, board members, young members and liaisons with special interests in a variety of subspecialty areas within podiatric practice, formulated the recommendations for the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely Campaign. The Committee worked with podiatric colleagues to create an initial list of recommendations, which was reviewed and narrowed down to eight recommendations. The list of eight recommendations was further developed and distributed to the Committee for ranking in numerical order. Committee members were asked to rank the recommendations based on their relevance, timeliness, strength of supporting evidence and appropriateness for inclusion in the Choosing Wisely Campaign. The rankings and deliberation enabled the Committee to come to the final five recommendations, which were again reviewed to ensure appropriate evidence was used to support each recommendation. The final recommendations were approved by the Board of Trustees of the APMA before submission to the ABIM Foundation.
(6–10) The American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA) tasked their Clinical Practice Advisory Committee consisting of APMA members, board members, young members, and liaisons with special interests in a variety of subspecialty areas within podiatric practice to formulate the recommendations for the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely Campaign. The Committee worked with podiatric colleagues to create an initial list of recommendations, which was reviewed and narrowed down to nine recommendations. The list of nine recommendations was further developed and distributed to the Committee for ranking in numerical order. Committee members were asked to rank the recommendations based on their relevance, timeliness, strength of supporting evidence and appropriateness for inclusion in the Choosing Wisely Campaign. The rankings and deliberation allowed the Committee to come to the final five recommendations, which were again reviewed to ensure appropriate evidence was used to support each recommendation. The final recommendations were approved by the Board of Trustees of the APMA before submission to the ABIM Foundation.
APMA’s disclosure and conflict of interest policy can be found at www.apma.org.
Sources
Lipsky BA, et al. 2012 Infectious Diseases Society of America Clinical Practice Guideline for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Diabetic Foot Infections. CID. 2012;54:132.
