Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Hospital Readmission of Patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Prevalence, Causes and Outcomes

Marco Meloni
* ORCID logo ,
Aikaterini Andreadi
ORCID logo ,
Valeria Ruotolo
,
Maria Romano
,
Ermanno Bellizzi
,
Laura Giurato
,
Alfonso Bellia
,
Luigi Uccioli
,
Davide Lauro
Version 1 : Received: 22 June 2023 / Approved: 27 June 2023 / Online: 27 June 2023 (10:18:13 CEST)

How to cite: Meloni, M.; Andreadi, A.; Ruotolo, V.; Romano, M.; Bellizzi, E.; Giurato, L.; Bellia, A.; Uccioli, L.; Lauro, D. Hospital Readmission of Patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Prevalence, Causes and Outcomes. Preprints 2023, 2023061881. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1881.v1 Meloni, M.; Andreadi, A.; Ruotolo, V.; Romano, M.; Bellizzi, E.; Giurato, L.; Bellia, A.; Uccioli, L.; Lauro, D. Hospital Readmission of Patients with Diabetic Foot Ulcers: Prevalence, Causes and Outcomes. Preprints 2023, 2023061881. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.1881.v1

Abstract

The study aims to evaluate the rate of readmission in patients affected by diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs), causes and the outcomes of patients requiring a new hospitalization. This study is a retrospective observational study including consecutive patients requiring hospitalization since January 2019 to September 2022 due to a DFU. Once they were discharged, patients were regularly followed as outpatients. After 6 months of follow-up, the rate of hospital readmission for a diabetic foot problem was recorded. According to the readmission or not, patients were divided in two groups, readmitted and not readmitted patients respectively. Hence, all patients were followed for six months more and outcomes for the two groups were analyzed and compared. The mean age was 6812yrs, with a prevalence of male (72.6%); the majority of patients were affected by type 2 diabetes (>90%) with a mean diabetes duration of approximately 20yrs. After 6 months of follow-up, 68 (21.9%) patients were readmitted. The main reason of hospital readmission were the presence of critical limb ischaemia (CLI) in the contralateral limb (6.1%), the recurrence of CLI in the previous treated limb (4.5%) and the onset of new infected DFU in the contralateral foot (4.5%). Readmitted patients reported lower rate of healing (51.5vs89.2%,p<0.0001) and higher rate of major amputation (10.3vs4.5%,p=0.04) in comparison to not readmitted patients. CLI and dialysis resulted independent predictors of hospital readmission. Hospital readmission is frequent issue among patients with DFUs, increasing the risk of non-healing and major amputation. CLI resulted the main cause of new hospitalization.

Keywords

diabetes; diabetic foot; hospital admission; limb salvage

Subject

Medicine and Pharmacology, Endocrinology and Metabolism

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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