Incidence of major amputation for diabetes in Scotland sets a target for us all

摘要

In this issue, Kennon et al. (1) report the incidence of amputation in diabetes across Scotland. Their findings are expressed both in terms of the total population (which is primarily a measure of national disease burden and much influenced by the changing prevalence of diagnosed diabetes) and the population with diabetes: the "at risk" population. The advantage of expressing amputation in terms of those at risk is that the results can be used as an indication of the quality of disease management, even though the data require careful interpretation (2). Unfortunately, it is not possible to calculate incidence in the population at risk without reliable information on the prevalence of diabetes in the community or country being studied, and such information is rarely available. The study by Kennon et al. (1) is, therefore, a tribute to those who created the Scottish Care Information-Diabetes Collaboration (SCI-DC) (3).