Indexing Title: MJCABAHUG’s Medical Anecdotal Report [04-6]

MAR Title: Diabetic foot

Date of Medical Observation:  August 2004

Narration:

            I have a 66-year-old patient who was admitted with a non healing wound on the plantar surface of the right foot who was non compliant diabetic patient with very high sugar.

            Patient was assessed at the emergency room and the patient was advised below-the-knee-amputation.  The patient refused.  She was so afraid of losing her right foot.  So what was done instead on her was radical debridement.  The patient’s sugar was controlled and the patient improved without amputating her foot.

Insights (Discovery, Stimulus, REINFORCEMENT):

            In diabetic foot patients, it very vital to control the sugar the blood sugar as well as the infection.  As much as possible, it is very humane if we could do conservative surgery in diabetic foot patients because study shows most of those amputated die not because of complications of their disease but because of depression.

            It is vital to decide who should be amputated or not.  Though it is so tedious to flush their wounds daily, it is just saving their lives by giving them the chance to salvage their foot.