FRIDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Patients undergoing foot and ankle surgery are more likely to have postoperative infections if they have complicated diabetes mellitus, while patients with uncomplicated diabetes do not appear to have a higher risk than patients without diabetes, according to research published in the Feb. 1 issue of the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery.
Dane K. Wukich, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and colleagues reviewed charts for 1,000 orthopedic foot and ankle surgery patients to compare infection rates for patients with and without diabetes.
In all, 4.8 percent of patients had a postoperative infection, of which 52 percent had diabetes, even though they accounted for only 19 percent of the entire cohort, the researchers found. While patients in the subset with uncomplicated diabetes were not at significantly greater risk of infection compared to those without diabetes, the researchers found that the risk of postoperative infection was ten times higher in patients with complicated diabetes compared to those without the disease. The risk was six times higher in patients with complicated diabetes compared to patients with uncomplicated diabetes.
"Patients with diabetes mellitus are at increased risk of severe infection compared with those without diabetes," the authors conclude. "Patients with uncomplicated diabetes did not have an increased risk of postoperative infection compared with patients without diabetes, whereas patients with complicated diabetes had a significantly higher rate of postoperative infection."
Abstract
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