[Update on diabetic foot infections].

Diabetes is one of the most common non-transmitted disease and currently 346 million people are affected in the world. According to the World Health Organization about 15% of diabetic patients develop a foot ulcer in need of medical care. Infection is a serious complication and in the western world it is the major responsible cause of lower limb amputation. In the 84% of cases amputation is the final step in the treatment of a non-healing foot ulcer. So, it's clear that, in order to reduce amputation rate, it's important to prevent foot ulcer formation and improve the treatment of lesion. In this review we report the most recent international literature as regards epidemiology, etiology, classification, diagnosis, microbiology and treatment of infected diabetic foot ulcers. The purpose of our work is to remark the multifactorial features of this pathology and the role of infectious disease specialist in a multidisciplinary team for the treatment of infected diabetic foot ulcers. The knowledge of microbiology on one hand, and the need of a complex and long term antibiotic therapy on the other, point out the importance of infectious disease specialist to facilitate, if possible, the healing of a infected diabetic foot ulcers.