If April is Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month, then November—National Diabetes Month—is its first cousin.
According to the Amputee Coalition’s new prevalence study, released in February, 58 percent of Americans who undergo amputations have a prior diabetes diagnosis.
A sizeable number of those patients only lose toes, not feet or legs. But with a little scratch-paper math, we can estimate that about 160,000 individuals with diabetes experience “major” limb loss each year in this country.
Not all these patients are new amputees. Many have already lost one limb because of diabetes and are now losing another, or they’re having an above-knee amputation on a leg that has already been amputated below the knee. All the same, diabetes causes more than 13,000 instances of limb loss each month—not just during National Diabetes Month.
In an article this summer for The Guardian, journalist Neil Barsky characterized diabetes-related limb loss as a preventable epidemic caused by “an inequitable healthcare system that deprives patients of information about their own care and diet.” The US medical industry incentivizes disease treatments such as insulin, revascularization, and amputation over preventive measures such as education, exercise, and a low-carb diet.
“As with other aspects of health in the US, big money often trumps sound healthcare practice,” Barsky argues. But efforts to address this problem are underway. Subscribe to Amplitude’s free weekly newsletter for more info about the potential solutions to this avoidable crisis.
