On their return from a comedy club in New Jersey, Tracy Morgan (longtime star of NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ’30 Rock’ with Tina Fey) and his companions were struck by a truck Saturday evening. The crash was fatal for one member of Morgan’s crew, and resulted in the critical injury of two others. Morgan himself sustained numerous injuries including broken ribs, nose, and a severely broken leg. Authorities believe that a driver of a Walmart truck hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, and in an attempt to avoid a collision with another car swerved into the back of the Morgan’s limousine. Following these news reports, rumors quickly spread across twitter and other social media outlets regarding Morgan’s need for a lower extremity amputation.
While now proven to be a complete fabrication, this erroneous rumor is more real than the pranksters likely believe. Currently, there are nearly 2 million people living with limb loss in the United States1. Half of these amputations are due to traumatic injury; however, the other half is due to complications of medical diseases such as vascular disorders or diabetes mellitus. Despite our best efforts at prevention, diabetic foot ulcers still precede nearly 84%2 of all nontraumatic amputations in diabetic patients in the US.
This is why I stress to all of my patients at Crofton Podiatry that they take extreme caution and care with respect to their foot health. Our feet endure tremendous amount of forces throughout the day. However, in the presence of chronic diabetes, our bodies become less able to alert us to problems, and recover from this damage. The development of peripheral neuropathy (or lack of sensation in our feet) renders us vulnerable to the repetitive damage of walking, and may facilitate the silent formation of a diabetic foot ulcer (or wound).
If you have diabetes, current American Diabetes Association (ADA) guidelines state that you should be seeing a podiatric specialist at least once a year to prevent the development of a diabetic foot ulcer. In many cases, certain risk factors may make this minimum visitation interval even more frequent. Whether you’re in Crofton or not and are concerned about your overall foot health, make an appointment with a local podiatrist to get the best and most up to date care information tailored to your body and lifestyle.
By Brad Toll.
References:
1: ‘Limb loss statistics’. Taken from the Limb Loss Resource Center via www.amputee-coalition.org Accessed on 6/7/2014