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TUCSON - April is "Foot Health Month," and today on News 4 at 4, two doctors from the University of Arizona stopped by with information from an important study on diabetes and keeping feet healthy.

The "Team approach to diabetic wound healing and amputation prevention," is a UA study that Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Mills worked on, which has shown that collaboration between vascular and podiatry is making a major difference in wound healing and amputation prevention for patients with diabetes.

The study shows for the first time in the literature that an integrated surgical team can have a dramatic impact on surgery type (many more proactive procedures rather than reactive emergency amputations) and on amputation reduction (46% reduction in high level amputation in the first two years). This collaboration, pioneered at the University of Arizona, is called a "Toe and Flow" program; the toe being the podiatrists and the flow being the vascular surgeons.

Dr. Mills and Dr. Armstrong stopped by the New 4 Tucson studios to discuss their work.

A summary of the study can be found here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22431496

Here is an article written about this approach that includes UA surgeons Dr. David Armstrong and Dr. Joseph Mills:

http://www.lowerextremityreview.com/article/taking-a-team-approach-to-diabetic-limb-salvage

Also, the CDC website has a special section dedicated to Diabetes and foot health:

http://www.cdc.gov/Features/DiabetesFootHealth/