Dear Readers,
It’s been awhile. Time really does fly. I realize it has been over a year and a half since my last post. I really don’t have any excuses. Life just seems to happen that way. One day I am posting all sorts of updates on what’s happening in the world of lower extremity infections and then I just stopped. Over these past months, I have had a number of people ask me what ever happened to the blog as they really enjoyed reading it and felt it was valuable. I’ve heard from students, residents, colleagues, my publisher and a surprising number of people I would have never expected to be interested. It made me realize how large my readership and reach really was.
I’ve heard you. I believe that the time is finally right to start things up again. You may have seen the recent ad that DataTrace placed on PM News about the resurrection of the blog. www.podiatrym.com/pmnews.cfm. There has been quite a bit happening in the world of antibiotics and antifungals for onychomycosis. After having only one FDA approved antibiotic in 5 years, now we have had 3 new drugs released in just a few months. The antifungal situation is even more exciting. It has been 15 years since any new drug has been approved for the treatment of onychomycosis. In just over a month this summer, two new topical agents were approved and are now being marketed. And, that is just the beginning. The literature continues to contain studies on diabetic foot infections, onychomycosis and osteomyelitis at a seemingly increasing rate. I have become a big fan of My NCBI (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) a free service that allows you to sign up for alerts to newly published literature using any search terms you wish. For example, every Monday morning I receive weekly emails alerting me to papers on the topics of “foot osteomyelitis”, “diabetic foot infections”, and “onychomycosis”.
Over the next few weeks I hope to cover all of these topics and more. I may experiment a bit with format providing some really brief entries to compliment the longer more in-depth posts that really take some time and effort to sit down and write.
I want to thank all of you who have inquired about the blog and asked me to re-start it. Also, thank you to ALL of my readers. The site had quite a nice sized following in the past and I hope to build it back up and surpass that reach in the near future.
