How to Use patientINFORM

Patients or their family members can go directly to the Web sites of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association or American Heart Association to learn more about important advances on specific diseases and treatments.

The participating voluntary health organizations provide consumers with links to the full text of selected journal articles as soon as they are published, as well as materials created by these groups to help the patient or family member more fully understand the implications of the research. (Each organization will choose how much and what type of material it will create.)

Publishers provide the organizations with online access to their peer-reviewed biomedical journals, immediately upon publication. Content from back issues of scholarly journals will also be available to the voluntary health organizations, broadening access to include a vast array of research articles.

The example below illustrates how one voluntary health organization might write about foot sores, putting a recent research study in context for patients.  In this example, a link would be provided that would allow patients to click through directly to the Diabetes Care article.

In people with diabetes, foot sores (ulcers) develop when nerve damage caused by diabetes keeps a wound or break in the skin from healing.  If a doctor does not treat them, these sores can get infected and the foot may even have to be amputated.  People with diabetes suffering from sores need to find the best treatments to preserve their health and mobility.

A recent study in the journal Diabetes Care reports on total contact casts, which fit around the whole foot and keep weight off the foot when the patient is standing. Unfortunately, people with diabetes sometimes find it hard to decide whether to use total contact casts or not. Although they are considered the best way to heal sores, some patients have problems with total contact casts because it's hard to move freely, they are expensive, and the patient must see a specialist. In addition, patients with infected sores risk spreading the infection since a total contact cast keeps the sore from being treated every day. Patients who have partly blocked blood vessels (peripheral arterial disease) in their legs risk getting even more sores.  

The new study provides some clear guidance in helping patients choose among different treatment options. The researchers confirmed that, overall, total contact casts are effective at promoting healing. However, the study also found that if patients have both blood vessel blockage and an infection, or if they have a sore on their heel, other treatments may work better.