Recurrence of Diabetic Foot Ulcer and Associated Risk Factors: A 3-Year Retrospective Study

Abstract

The burden of diabetes foot ulcer is immense, resulting to prolonged hospital stay and high cost of care. The aim of this study is to identify the predictors of ulcer recurrence which will help mitigate this disabling, pocket-draining, but highly preventable complication of diabetes mellitus (DM).
 Methodology: This was a 3-year retrospective study of patients hospitalised for diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) in Enugu State University Teaching Hospital from March 2020 to February 2023. Information on demographics, relevant diabetes history and complications, characteristics of DFU, outcome, DFU recurrence were obtained.
 Results: Most of the patients (82.5%) were between 41 and 70 years of age with a mean age is 57.86 ± 12.45. There were marginally more females (52.6%) than male (47.4%). The subjects were predominantly businessmen/traders (43.9%), and 73.7% had DM duration of 1-5 years. Duration of admission was 8 weeks for 31.6% of the patients, 4 weeks for 26.3%, 3 weeks for 21.1% and 12 weeks for 12.3% of the patients. More of the patients were in Wagner grades 3 (43.9%) and 4 (31.6%). The Prevalence of (diabetic peripheral neuropathy) DPN, peripheral artery disease (PAD) and Retinopathy among the patients were 82.5%, 45.6% and 59.6% respectively. Recurrence of DFU occurred in 35% of the subjects. Occupation and wound site positively correlated with reocurrence in this study. The outcome shows that 59.6% of the patients had good healing, 21.1% had ray amputation while 14% had below knee amputation.
 Keywords: Diabetic foot ulcer, recurrence, peripheral neuropathy, peripheral artery disease.