The number of veterans who experience an amputation due to disease is far greater than the number who have lost limbs in conflict, an unusual new study of Scottish veterans has found.
Investigators used data from a national veterans health study, including 78,000 veterans and 253,000 nonveterans born between 1945 and 1995. Trauma rarely was a cause of amputation, but peripheral arterial disease was recorded for two-thirds of both veteran and nonveteran amputees, and type 2 diabetes was found in 41% of veterans and 33% of nonveterans. A dual diagnosis was found in about a third of each group, reported Beverly Bergman, Ph.D., of the University of Glasgow.
Bergman and colleagues also found that although veterans have more chronic disease risk factors such as smoking, their rate of disease-related amputation is no different than nonveterans.
The findings may highlight the severity of the growing global problem of chronic disease in older adults. Diabetes and peripheral arterial disease can result in the loss of limbs, and both are more common due to an aging population and disease prevalence. But the high public profile of conflict-related limb loss risks may eclipse the needs of veterans with disease-related loss, the researchers added.
“Losing a limb is one of the most devastating consequences of combat, but it is important that we do not forget the much larger number of both veterans and non-veterans who are affected in exactly the same way, but through disease.”
The study was published in the BMJ.
