Every three minutes in America, a person loses all or part of a limb due to diabetes.
Even more alarming, Black Americans face rates of amputations up to four times higher than non-Hispanic white Americans. LatinX communities are 50% more likely to have an amputation, and indigenous communities face amputations rates that are two times higher than those among non-Hispanic white Americans, according to data from the American Diabetes Association (ADA).
Access to quality care and earlier intervention remains the challenge that leads to unnecessarily high rates of amputations, particularly among people of color.
Virtual care management company Podimetrics and the ADA are leading an initiative to reduce the number of unnecessary amputations that happen every year in the U.S.
Called the Amputation Prevention Alliance, the three-year effort aims to improve care for all people living with diabetes and enhance access to quality care, technology and necessary interventions. The aim is to reduce the number of unnecessary amputations that take place every year in the U.S.
The effort will particularly focus on minority communities that disproportionately suffer from complicated diabetes cases, diabetic foot ulcers and amputations, according to executives.
More than 135,000 amputations occur every year in the U.S., with the majority of those procedures being preventable, but, due to challenges in accessing quality care, patients are forced into unnecessary amputations and even death.
Podimetrics co-founder and CEO Jon Bloom, M.D., a former anesthesiologist, refers to diabetes-related amputations as "Civil War-medicine" that could be prevented with earlier care interventions.
Podimetrics has focused on putting an end to unnecessary amputations for patients dealing with diabetes for more than a decade.
"Our collaboration specific to the Amputation Prevention Alliance is a direct extension of our long-standing mission at Podimetrics," Bloom said, noting that 85% of diabetes-related amputations are preventable.
To succeed in preventing amputations, the industry needs to launch a dedicated initiative that combines policy levers, reimbursement strategies, technical innovation and boots-on-the-ground care to move forward with the ultimate goal of reducing the need for amputations among at-risk populations living with complex diabetes, Bloom said.
The collaboration, which also includes Abbott, Cardiovascular Systems Inc. and the CLI Global Society, will focus on addressing communities facing disproportionately high rates of amputations and amputated-related mortality, including through advancing needed policy changes, driving clinician awareness of opportunities to prevent amputations and empowering patients to advocate for their best care, executives said.
“This Alliance, through the groundwork laid by the ADA’s Health Equity Now platform, will increase awareness among patients and health care professionals of risk factors for amputations and opportunities to avoid these procedures," said Charles Henderson, ADA’s CEO, in a statement.
"This initiative aims to advance needed policy changes to ensure that health care professionals have the tools necessary to prevent unnecessary procedures and save lives moving forward. We can and must do better," he said.
Access to quality care, technology and earlier interventions can make a substantial difference in salvaging limbs and saving lives, according to alliance members.
The ADA has a proven track record of success when it comes to diabetes education and advocacy, Bloom noted.
"We’re also excited to collaborate with the other cross-industry partners, like Abbott, a leader in medical device innovation; Advanced Oxygen Therapy Inc., creator of single-use topical wound oxygen (TWO2) products that allow therapy to be applied effortlessly to patients suffering with wounds at home and across all of healthcare; Cardiovascular Systems, Inc., provider of innovative solutions for the revascularization of patients with complex coronary and peripheral artery disease; and The Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI) Global Society on a mission to improve quality of life by preventing amputations and death due to CLI," he said.
"We strongly believe that the mission to end amputations will best be achieved through cross-industry collaboration," Bloom said.
“It is without question that diabetes-related amputations unfairly afflict communities of color at an alarming rate,” said Dr. Mike Griffiths, president, CEO and medical director at Advanced Oxygen Therapy Inc. and a founding partner of the alliance, in a press release. “When you consider that five-year mortality rates among those having a limb amputated due to diabetes are higher than most forms of cancer, then this situation is as dire as it is tragic.”
Survey data confirm that far too many people with diabetes are unaware about their own risk for an amputation. In a recent survey of people living with diabetes conducted by Thrivable, despite diabetes being the leading cause of amputations, 65% of those surveyed said they believed they were not at risk for amputation and just 1 in 4 of those surveyed understood the signs and symptoms of conditions that can lead to an amputation such as peripheral neuropathy, peripheral artery disease or critical limb ischemia.
Bloom and Podimetrics co-founder David Linders started the company in 2011 as graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management to catch diabetic foot ulcers before they require amputations.
The company developed technology that consumers can use at home to detect warning signs of diabetic foot complications. Podimetrics' FDA-approved SmartMat, which patients are asked to stand on for 20 seconds each day, measures temperature changes in the feet to check for “hot spots,” localized inflammation in the foot that could be the first signs of diabetic foot ulcers.
The SmartMat can detect warning signs of diabetic foot complications up to five weeks before they present clinically, allowing for early interventions to help prevent diabetic amputations.