As per recent reports, an investigation, which was carried out recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has revealed that during the period from 1996 to 2008, the number of foot and leg amputations among people in the United States, those aged 40 years or more and were confirmed positive for having diabetes, had slumped effectively by almost 65%.

The findings of the study, reported under the title “Declining Rates of Hospitalization for Non-traumatic Lower-Extremity Amputation in the Diabetic Population Aged 40 years or Older: U. S., 1988-2008”, have been made available in the recent online edition of the journal Diabetes Care.

Earlier in 1996, the rate of age-adjusted foot and leg amputations was around 11.2 out of every 1,000 people suffering from diabetes, though it fell drastically to around 3.9 out of every 1000 people by the year 2008.

Experts have revealed that the so-called non-traumatic, lower-limb amputations, is basically a term used for referring to amputations that are inspired by a variety of circulatory issues, instead of those caused due to some kind of injury. Also, it has been revealed that various circulatory troubles are ubiquitous adverse consequence seen among people having diabetes.

In addition, the findings of the study revealed that during the year 2008 women were having comparatively lower age-adjusted frequency of lower-limb amputations (around 1.9 out of every 1,000) as compared to men (6 out of every 1,000). In addition, the findings also shed light on the verity that people over the age of 75 were then having the highest rate of lower-limb amputations (around 6.2 out of every 1,000) as compared to individuals belonging to various other age groups.

While expressing her opinion regarding the findings of the study, an epidemiologist at the Division of Diabetes Translation of CDC, Nilka Ríos Burrows, said: “The significant drop in rates of non-traumatic lower-limb amputations among U. S. adults with diagnosed diabetes is certainly encouraging, but more work is needed to reduce the disparities among certain populations”.