Abstract

Background: Diabetes-related lower limb amputations constitute a significant health burden due to its attendant morbidity and mortality in developing countries. There have been, however, few reports of such cases in the literature. Diabetes foot care in resource-constrained settings, especially those of sub-Sahara Africa, is afflicted by several current challenges. The rarity of bilateral amputation from complicated diabetic foot syndrome suggests reporting this unexpected clinical event. This communication equally reviews current updates in the literature that are leading to stratified diabetic foot care in contemporary African settings.

Case Presentation: We report an unanticipated event of second contralateral lower limb amputation. This clinical scenario was mainly in a 65-year-old Cameroonian male diabetic amputee. Incidentally, the index patient was successfully optimized and underwent a right below-knee amputation with an excellent postoperative outcome.

Conclusions: Interestingly, from this case report and corroborated by other studies, peripheral vascular disease is critical as a lead factor in bilateral extremity amputation compared with its influence in foot ulceration in diabetes. Besides, the peripheral occlusive arterial disease is more closely associated with diabetic bilateral amputation than neuropathy or level of foot care knowledge. The role of foot check for neuropathy impact identification of at-risk diabetic foot is confirmed from several other studies. However, this brings to the fore, type of Identification is needed relatively early in the course of diabetes. A unique foot care program and strategies for patients with diabetic foot syndrome are much sorted after in our contemporary African settings.

Keywords: Diabetes; Diabetic Foot Syndrome; Foot Care Program; Amputation; Sub-Saharan Africa

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Citation

Citation: Bamidele Johnson Alegbeleye. "The Second Lower Limb Amputation in A Diabetic Amputee: A Case Report and Review of the Literature".Acta Scientific Orthopaedics 3.2 (2020): 25-34.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Bamidele Johnson Alegbeleye. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.