A Prospective Study on Prevalence of Foot ulcers in diabetic patients visiting Surgery Department in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

ABSTRACT

Background: Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is one of the most widespread non communicable diseases across the world. Two types of complications are encountered usually with DM microvascular and macrovascular. Diabetic neuropathy is one of the most commonly occurring microvascular complications, of which the most common type is distal symmetrical neuropathy or polyneuropathy. Patients who present with diabetic foot ulceration are heterogeneous. Methods: A checklist was prepared to enter the data already recorded in the case record. This checklist was pilot-tested by recording data from positive case records before analyzing the checklist. A Research Assistant was involved in collection of data from the Medical Records. Results: In  the present  study, 26 patients with DM only and 40 patients with DM foot ulcers were included. With regard to gender distribution, among cases and controls, males were more compared to females. Among cases 28.7% and among controls 75% were males. Age distribution showed more than 75% of the cases and controls were in the age group of 30–60 years. In some of the cases and control subjects, the lipid profile values were not available and hence the comparison of lipid profile was done with available data. The mean values of lipid profile was high among cases compared to controls but was not statistically significant except HDL (p < 0.05). The mean HDL value for diabetic patients with foot ulcers was 37.3± 8.25 whereas that for the non-foot ulcer patients is 31.3± 7.85. Conclusion: Middle-aged male diabetics are most likely to have foot complications. It can be drawn from this study that socio-demographic factors like age, gender along with factors like glycemic control and dyslipidemia are associated with foot ulcers in diabetic patients. It is binding on the health care provider to control these have risk factors to prevent development of complications in diabetic patients with foot ulcers and improve the quality of life.