Twenty-two patients who had diabetes mellitus and had needed an
amputation for gangrene in an upper extremity at an average age of
fifty-one years were identified and followed. The five patients who were
still living at the latest follow-up had been followed for an average of
50.6 months. The other seventeen patients survived for an average of only
20.6 months after the amputation. All of the patients were in poor health;
eighteen had needed an amputation in a lower extremity, and sixteen
received hemodialysis. The results of amputation in an upper extremity were
unsatisfactory; the site of the initial amputation healed in only two of
the twenty-two patients. In the remaining twenty patients, a total of
sixty-three additional operations were performed on an upper extremity, and
five of the twenty patients died before the wound had healed.