Page 18 - SAM September 2019

PUBLIC HEALTH

Fighting an

Epidemic of

Amputations

in Bexar

County

Let’s Toe-and-Flow, San Antonio!

By Lyssa Ochoa, MD, Board-certified Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon;
The San Antonio Vascular and Endovascular Clinic

ver 2,000 Bexar County residents
will lose a limb to amputation due
to diabetes and peripheral arterial
disease this year alone. San Antonio has na-
tionally-high rates of diabetes (13.3% of
adults) and obesity (38.4% of adults) which
are major contributors to this problem .
1
Furthermore, San Antonio’s economics
creates uniquely challenging barriers to pre-
venting amputations related to diabetes and
obesity. In fact, data from the Texas De-
partment of State Health Services shows
that the diabetic amputation rates are high-
est in zip codes that also rank highest in the
Hardship Index, which aggregates six so-
cioeconomic factors to identify relative dif-
ficulty in daily living.

18 San Antonio Medicine • September 2019