COVID-19 And Lower Extremity Amputations
What we're seeing is early on, in the beginning of COVID, when all the restrictions were in place and the virus was wreaking havoc, we saw a lot of our patients staying home.
We saw a lot of our wound care patients, they were not only staying home and not going the wound care center, but they were not going to the emergency room. They weren't going to their doctor's appointments. They weren't going to all of their different services, their cardiologist, checking their blood pressure.
We saw a domino effect, where not only were they having issues with their wounds and their wounds were becoming more sickly and gangrenous and infected, but they were also overall becoming more sickly.
Not only in my practice but everybody who practices medicine and wound care can attest to this, that we just saw a dramatic increase in the amputation rate. That was simply due to people not going to get the care they needed.
What we as clinicians can do to combat this is to incorporate more people into the continuity of care. We need to talk more with our home nurses and our VNA services and our different providers. Get in touch with the patients that you're seeing. Get in touch with their primary care doctors. Get in touch with their nurses.
If they are in a nursing home, get in touch with the nurse that takes care of them on their unit. It's very important because you'd be amazed that the simple little phone call, and then, the next thing you know, you've got a plan. Everybody's happy because everybody loves a good phone call to discuss the patients and to get them back on track.
