Characteristics of Patients with Charcot's Arthropathy and its Complications in the Saudi Diabetic Population: A Cross-Sectional Study.

BACKGROUND: Charcot's arthropathy (CA) is a destructive rare complication of diabetes, and its diagnosis remains challenging for foot specialists and surgeons. We aimed to assess the clinical presentation and characteristics of CA and the frequencies of its various types. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2016, and included 149 adults with diabetes diagnosed as having CA. Cases of CA were classified based on the Brodsky anatomical classification into five types according to location and involved joints. RESULTS: The mean ± SD age of the studied cohort was 56.7 ± 11 years, with a mean ± SD diabetes duration of 21.2 ± 7.0 years. The CA cohort had poorly controlled diabetes and a high rate of neuropathy and retinopathy. The most frequent type of CA was type 4, with multiple regions involved at a rate of 56.4%, followed by type 1, with midfoot involvement at 34.5%. A total of 47.7% of the patients had bilateral CA. Complications affected 220 limbs, of which 67.7% had foot ulceration. With respect to foot deformity, hammertoe affected all of the patients; hallux valgus, 59.5%; and flatfoot, 21.8%. CONCLUSIONS: There is a high rate of bilateral CA, mainly type 4, which could be attributed to cultural habits in Saudi Arabia, including footwear. This finding warrants increasing awareness of the importance of maintaining proper footwear to avoid such complications. Implementation of preventive measures for CA is urgently needed.

All-cause mortality among diabetic foot patients and related risk factors in Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND: Although Diabetes mellitus is a major public health problem in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region with high rates of diabetic foot complications, there are only limited data concerning mortality among such a high risk group. Therefore, the main aim of the current study was to assess all-cause mortality and its related predictors among diabetic patients with and without diabetic foot complications. METHODS: Using data from the Saudi National Diabetes Registry (SNDR), a total of 840 patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes aged ≥25 years with current or past history of diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) or diabetes related lower extremity amputation (LEA) were recruited in 2007 from active patients' files and followed up to 2013. These patients were compared with an equal number of age and gender matched diabetic patients without foot complication recruited at the same period. All patients were subjected to living status verification at 31st December 2013. RESULTS: The all-cause mortality rate among patients with DFU was 42.54 per 1000 person-years and among LEA patients was 86.80 per 1000 person-years among LEA patients for a total of 2280 and 1129 person-years of follow up respectively. The standardized mortality ratio (SMR) (95% CI) was 4.39 (3.55-5.23) and 7.21 (5.70-8.72) for cases with foot ulcer and LEA respectively. The percentage of deceased patients increased by almost twofold (18.5%) among patients with diabetic foot ulcer and more than threefold (32.2%) among patients with LEA compared with patients without diabetic foot complications (10.7%). The worst survival was among patients with LEA at 0.679 and the presence of diabetic nephropathy was the only significant independent risk factor for all-cause mortality among patients with diabetic foot complications. On the other hand, obese patients have demonstrated significantly reduced all-cause mortality rate. CONCLUSIONS: Diabetic patients with diabetic foot complications have an excess mortality rate when compared with diabetic counterparts without foot complications and the general population. Early interventions to prevent foot ulceration and consequent LEA as well as all the measurements for reducing the prevalence of microvascular and macrovascular complications should be considered.

Can a diabetic foot be malignant?

Diabetes has been linked with malignancies like colon, rectum, liver, biliary tract, pancreas, kidney, leukaemia and melanoma. Melanoma can sometimes manifest as a diabetic foot ulcer.We describe an elderly male with Type 2 diabetes, who had presented to us with a non-healing wound at the right heel, that later turned out to be an invasive malignant melanoma.

Diabetic foot complications and their risk factors from a large retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Foot complications are considered to be a serious consequence of diabetes mellitus, posing a major medical and economical threat. Identifying the extent of this problem and its risk factors will enable health providers to set up better prevention programs. Saudi National Diabetes Registry (SNDR), being a large database source, would be the best tool to evaluate this problem. METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study of a cohort of 62,681 patients aged ≥ 25 years from SNDR database, selected for studying foot complications associated with diabetes and related risk factors. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of diabetic foot complications was 3.3% with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of (3.16%-3.44%), whilst the prevalences of foot ulcer, gangrene, and amputations were 2.05% (1.94%-2.16%), 0.19% (0.16%-0.22%), and 1.06% (0.98%-1.14%), respectively. The prevalence of foot complications increased with age and diabetes duration predominantly amongst the male patients. Diabetic foot is more commonly seen among type 2 patients, although it is more prevalent among type 1 diabetic patients. The Univariate analysis showed Charcot joints, peripheral vascular disease (PVD), neuropathy, diabetes duration ≥ 10 years, insulin use, retinopathy, nephropathy, age ≥ 45 years, cerebral vascular disease (CVD), poor glycemic control, coronary artery disease (CAD), male gender, smoking, and hypertension to be significant risk factors with odds ratio and 95% CI at 42.53 (18.16-99.62), 14.47 (8.99-23.31), 12.06 (10.54-13.80), 7.22 (6.10-8.55), 4.69 (4.28-5.14), 4.45 (4.05-4.89), 2.88 (2.43-3.40), 2.81 (2.31-3.43), 2.24 (1.98-2.45), 2.02 (1.84-2.22), 1.54 (1.29-1.83), and 1.51 (1.38-1.65), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Risk factors for diabetic foot complications are highly prevalent; they have put these complications at a higher rate and warrant primary and secondary prevention programs to minimize morbidity and mortality in addition to economic impact of the complications. Other measurements, such as decompression of lower extremity nerves, should be considered among diabetic patients.