Dear Isabelle,

Thank you for your reply!
We excluded ischemia (good pulses) and osteomyelitis (negative probe
to bone, no bone involvement on X-ray).
Unfortunately we use 'deep swabs' instead of curetage (mainly due to
technical reasons - but I know that we have to decide with our
laboratory that they'll accept tissue and make quantitative analysis
of microorganisms in it).
I saw in one paper (K. Harding et al., if I remember) that MRSA was
cosnidered as pathogen independently of its quantity in material but
I'm agree that we could miss other (and perhaps more important)
pathogens (either anaerobes or bacteria from deeper tissues) and
these pathogens were not sensitive to Fusidic acid.
I am very interested in your technique of casting (do you mean ankle-
foot cast, not cast boot?). Is it different from semi-rigid 3M cast
(usually made of 1 roll of rigid Scotchcast and 2 rolls of semi-
rigid Scotchcast) which is also quite simple?
With the best wishes,
Oleg.