Re-amputations and mortality among patients with diabetic or peripheral vascular complications.

7th to the 48th postoperative month only a further 4.3% of the amputee population was re-amputated. It seems most probable that, by far, the majority of ipsilateral reamputations were due to postoperative complications that could not be controlled by conservative means. The greatest risk of death was encountered within 3 months following amputation, whereas the mortality rate 1 year after was 18.4%, and 4 years after amputation 22.5%. Hubbard published the outcome following rehabilitation for 92 vascular amputees admitted to a geriatric center in Australia [2]. The average age of subjects at amputation was 71 years (SD 9.0, range 47–91 years). There were 40 below-knee amputees, 37 aboveknee amputees, and 15 bilateral amputees – 11 bilateral BKA1 and 4 combination AKA2/ BKA. Three subjects died while inpatients in the center – all of them AKA, all females, and all in their ninth decade. Twenty-nine subjects (32%) died prior to completion of the study, and 18 (20%) within 2 years of amputation. Two subjects died prior to prosthetic fitting. Since 20% of amputees had died less than 2 years post-amputation, the study concluded that a very limited life-span can be expected for people with amputations who have a primary diagnosis of peripheral vascular disease. Pernot and co-authors [3] in the Netherlands described 191 major lower limb amputations in 164 patients, among them 77 BKA, 52 AKA and 43 knee disarticulations. Twenty of them (10.5%) died during hospitalization. Dillingham et al. [4] collected 3565 people who underwent lower limb amputations during the year 1996. Of these,