Treating hard‐to‐heal skin and nail onychomycosis of diabetic foot with plasma therapy
Abstract
Onychomycosis is a common skin and nail infection in diabetic mellitus (DM) patients. Treatments typically require topical and oral antifungals. Almost all tinea cases are cured with antifungals, but rare hard-to-heal infections can occur. These cases sometimes can result in an amputation. Plasma treatment is another option for tinea infections. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) was recently developed and has antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral effects among others.1 Our service used plasma care®, made by terraplasma medical GmbH (Munich, Germany). This is the first report of the use of plasma care® in our country. Informed consent was obtained from the patient. A 80 years old female had DM (HbA1c 8.5%) with a history of a right foot below knee amputation and a left 4th toe amputation 3 years ago. She got onychomycosis on her left foot and nail. A KOH prep was positive. Cultures grew Trichophyton rubrum. She started treatment with topical antifungal ointment (Efinaconazole 10% solution and Luliconazole topical ointments). The treatment for 4 weeks was unsuccessful, as was oral antifungal treatment with Fosravuconazole l-Lysine Ethanolate (100 mg/day). The patient continued to get worse (Figure 1A). The patient therefore trialed plasma therapy. Plasma therapy treatment was performed 10 min once a day. One week later, the patient's foot had improved and her culture results were negative (Figure 1B). Her topical therapy was changed from antifungal ointment to moisture ointment…
Read the paper
Related studies
- Diagnosis and management of glutaric aciduria type I – revised recommendations
- EZH2 Codon 641 Mutations are Common in BCL2-Rearranged Germinal Center B Cell Lymphomas
- Consensus guidelines for the diagnosis and management of pyridoxine‐dependent epilepsy due to α‐aminoadipic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency
- Systemic Metabolomic Changes in Blood Samples of Lung Cancer Patients Identified by Gas Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry
- Human OTULIN haploinsufficiency impairs cell-intrinsic immunity to staphylococcal α-toxin
- Discovery of Novel Recurrent Mutations in Childhood Early T-Cell Precursor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia by Whole Genome Sequencing - a Report From the St Jude Children's Research Hospital - Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.