Inpatients with culture-positive diabetic foot infections are at elevated risk for subsequent invasive infection with the same causative organism. In outpatients with index diabetic foot ulcers, we found that wound culture positivity was independently associated with increased odds of 1-year admission for systemic infection when compared with culture-negative wounds.
Keywords: Veterans Health Administration; diabetes mellitus; foot ulcer; methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus; mortality; systemic infection.
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America 2021.