Patient resources

Preparing for your visit

Bring photo ID, your insurance card, a list of every medicine you take, the names of your other doctors, recent reports (X-ray or MRI, circulation tests, cultures, hospital and operative reports), and the shoes you wear most often, along with any boot, brace or inserts you use. Our what to expect page walks through the whole visit.

Between visits

Keep the dressing clean and dry and change it as you were shown. Wear your offloading device as instructed, including at home, where many of the day’s steps are taken. Check both feet every day, using a mirror or a family member’s help for the soles, and keep your blood sugar as steady as you can.

Call us at 908-215-5953 if the wound gets bigger or deeper, or if you notice more redness, swelling, warmth, drainage, a bad smell or new pain. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department. That includes spreading redness with fever, black tissue, or a foot that turns cold, pale or blue.

If you’re having surgery

Our guides explain how to get ready and what recovery involves. See preparing for limb salvage surgery and recovery after limb salvage surgery. Your surgeon’s team will give you specific instructions for your operation, including when to stop eating and drinking, which medicines to take, and how much weight you may put on the foot. Those instructions always take priority over general information.

Some plans require authorization before surgery. Your insurance carrier can tell you what your plan requires, and our office can help when you call.

Insurance and referrals

Please call our office at 908-215-5953 to inquire about your insurance.

Coverage for dressings, offloading devices, therapeutic shoes and advanced wound products depends on your plan and on the item, and some need prior authorization. For more on therapeutic shoes, see diabetic foot care at Ozturk Foot & Ankle (external site).

Some plans require a referral from your primary care physician before a specialist visit. If you’re unsure, check with your insurance carrier or call us at 908-215-5953.

Forms

Our office will let you know which new-patient forms to complete, and how, when you schedule your appointment.

Sharing records safely

The simplest ways to share previous records are to bring them to your visit or to ask your previous doctor’s office to fax them to 908-446-2575. Please don’t email photos of your wound.

Read our website privacy policy. Ozturk Foot & Ankle’s Notice of Privacy Practices explains how your health information is used and protected; ask our office for a copy.

Glossary

Ankle-brachial index (ABI)

A simple test that compares the blood pressure at the ankle with the blood pressure in the arm, to look for narrowed leg arteries. With diabetes or kidney disease the result can look normal even when circulation is poor, because stiff arteries resist the cuff.

Charcot foot

A condition in which the bones and joints of a numb foot weaken, break and collapse, often after little or no injury. Early on, the foot is warm, red and swollen.

CROW (Charcot restraint orthotic walker)

A custom-made, padded boot that supports and protects a Charcot foot once the active, swollen phase has settled.

Debridement

Removing dead tissue, callus and debris from a wound so that it can heal from healthy tissue. It is done in the office, or in an operating room for deeper or infected wounds.

Granulation tissue

The healthy, red, slightly bumpy tissue that fills a healing wound from its base upward.

Negative-pressure wound therapy (NPWT)

A sealed dressing connected to a small pump that applies gentle suction, drawing off fluid and helping the wound close. It is often called a wound VAC.

Offloading

Taking pressure off a wound so that it can heal, for example with a cast, a boot, a special shoe or padding.

Osteomyelitis

Infection of a bone. In the foot it usually spreads from a nearby ulcer, and it is treated with antibiotics, surgery to remove the infected bone, or both.

Revascularization

A procedure to restore blood flow through a narrowed or blocked artery, such as angioplasty, a stent or a bypass. It is performed by a vascular specialist.

Skin substitute

A sheet of material, made from human or animal tissue or from synthetic material, placed on a wound to support healing. Placental membranes are one kind.

Toe pressure

A blood pressure measurement taken at the big toe with a small cuff. When leg arteries are stiff, it reflects blood flow to the foot more reliably than the ABI.

Total contact cast

A cast molded closely to the whole foot and lower leg that spreads pressure away from an ulcer on the sole. Because it can’t be taken off, the pressure stays off day and night.

Ulcer

An open wound in which the full thickness of the skin has broken down. On the foot, ulcers usually form over a pressure point, or where blood flow is poor.

Trusted reading

These independent organizations publish reliable, patient-friendly information. They are not affiliated with our practice.

• Diabetes and foot problems (external site)National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
• Foot complications of diabetes (external site)American Diabetes Association
• Diabetes: foot ulcers (external site)MedlinePlus (U.S. National Library of Medicine)
• Diabetic foot (external site)MedlinePlus (U.S. National Library of Medicine)
• Peripheral artery disease (external site)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• International guidelines on the diabetic foot (written for health professionals) (external site)International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot (IWGDF)