United States: Every day in the operating rooms throughout the country more and more type-2 diabetic patients are getting amputations due to complications from their diabetes.
Life-changing procedures are more frequent among the ones belonging to the Black and Latino ethnicities, which, in turn, suffer more from the disease, as data on health reports.
However, medical personnel are ensuring that diabetic patients can avoid losing limbs, and this is possible because the treatments are out there, but the problem is that many people especially among minorities don’t know of these treatments and are therefore missing out on this vital care.
Shelton Echols, a diabetic amputee said, “The reason I did not go to the doctor or anything, [is because] I didn’t want to hear the doctor say ‘We have to take your leg,'” as ABC News reported.
What do health authorities have to say?
Health officials, though, pointed out that with the new approach, the right medicines and treatments are getting to them sooner so that they avoid going under the knife.
Echols admitted that he was fully aware of his diabetes and health condition but never really did anything to improve his situation.
He mentioned his hemoglobin A1C tests which showed that he had 14 percent levels that were much beyond the normal values. A normal A1C is defined as being below 5.7 percent, by medical professionals.
He said, “So I was playing Russian roulette with my life at the time because I was in denial,” as ABC News reported.
Echols’ life changed one day when he saw a cut on his left leg that was not healing. Doctors discovered that the disease created a condition that cut off the circulation of his legs, and as a result, they had to amputate his left leg.
Echols said, “I really had a sense of peace for the simple fact that I knew in my heart everything was my fault. Everything was my fault.”
As his story becomes increasingly common among Black and Latino Type 2 diabetics, the data show.
Most of the time, complications that may occur include peripheral artery disease (PAD) which causes poor circulation of blood in the leg and the part that heals slowly, as indicated by the health experts. This leads to another reason why you may have to give up one of your arms.
The number of diabetics and amputation cases in the US
The number of diabetics who were diagnosed nationwide is more than 7 percent higher since 2001 as data from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases show.
There has been an increase of 18 percent in those people, who have to undergo an amputation, over that period, according to the survey. Research conducted by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases states that approximately 154,000 people have toes, legs, arms, and feet cut off each year, as ABC News reported.
Rising numbers more seen in the African Americans and Hispanics
The percentage of people of all races and ethnicities diagnosed with diabetes in the United States is on the increase now, and the percentage of them having amputations is also on the rise. An amputation that took a lower limb is four times more likely to be experienced by African Americans and Hispanics, while other ethnic groups didn’t experience such risk, a September study showed.
Dr. Richard Browne, a cardiologist in Charlotte, North Carolina, told ABC News that one of the main issues is that black patients aren’t often informed early on about their diabetes which is one of the reasons that leads to such high morbidity and mortality rates among them.
Browne, who is also a senior medical executive at Johnson & Johnson, said, “Very often, their symptoms are ignored,” as ABC News reported.