Comprehensive Management Strategies for Diabetic Foot: Prevention, Multidisciplinary Care, and Patient-Centered Outcomes

Diabetic foot remains a formidable global health problem, imposing immense burdens through persistent wounds, recurrent infections, disability, and limb loss among people living with diabetes. The field has witnessed major advances in elucidating biological mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic interventions, but solutions that significantly reduce recurrence, amputation, and mortality remain elusive. Current discourse has largely revolved around treatment innovations and molecular discoveries, leaving critical gaps in the translation of these advances into day-to-day clinical care, long-term patient follow-up, and strategies that meaningfully improve quality of life. Major unresolved questions remain about how best to deliver coordinated prevention, early detection, and rehabilitative services to reduce risks before they escalate into life-altering complications. There is growing recognition that integrating system-level approaches, multidisciplinary teams, and patient education into routine diabetic foot care will be crucial for sustained progress.This Research Topic aims to establish a platform focused on the holistic and integrative management of diabetic foot, emphasizing strategies that bridge from risk identification and prevention through acute care, rehabilitation, and ongoing support for optimal patient outcomes. The central goal is to move beyond discovery and individual treatments, prioritizing a seamless continuum of care that incorporates prevention, precise risk stratification, collaborative health delivery models, biomechanical assessment, psychosocial support, and dynamic care pathways. We seek to advance the science of real-world implementation: how multidisciplinary teams can be better coordinated, how screening and education can drive prevention, and how innovations in rehabilitation and health systems can lower recurrence and amputation rates. Key objectives include assessing the effectiveness of patient education programs, optimizing preventative screening, evaluating team-based care, and understanding how health systems, policy, and technology can reshape diabetic foot management.The scope of this Research Topic is tightly focused on comprehensive, system-level, and patient-centric management strategies for diabetic foot, from the earliest stages of prevention and risk assessment through multidisciplinary clinical intervention and rehabilitation. We encourage research that evaluates healthcare delivery, care models, prevention, health economics, and long-term patient outcomes, while de-emphasizing purely mechanistic or treatment discovery studies. To gather further insights in this area, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:o Implementation and outcomes of multidisciplinary team (MDT) approaches in diabetic foot careo Patient education, advocacy, and community-based prevention strategieso Health system models, referral pathways, and policy innovations for reducing recurrence and amputationo Long-term rehabilitation, gait retraining, and biomechanical assessment for functional restorationo Economic evaluation, real-world data, and quality of life outcomes in diabetic foot management Topic editors: Qiu Li, Hong Zhu, Johnson Boey Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79356/comprehensive-management-strategies-for-diabetic-foot-prevention-multidisciplinary-care-and-patient-centered-outcomes