Bacteriology of Diabetic Foot and Hand Ulcers?A Preliminary Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis
Author(s): Muhammad Musthafa Poyil* and Nadeem Bari
Abstract
Diabetes mellitus is a disease which occurs when the pancreas either fails to secrete the insulin or the body becomes unable to use the secreted insulin. As the disease progresses, diabetic ulcers which are open sores or wounds may develop as it has been reported in more than 25% of the patients. Even though the diabetic foot ulcers are more common the ulcers can develop on hands also. Infections with various pathogenic bacteria are common in such ulcers (40%-80%) and the multi-drug resistant bacterial strains and the complication arise from them cause prolonged morbidity, amputation of lower limb and in extreme cases even mortalities. So, to understand the quantitative and qualitative bacterial population in such diabetic wound ulcers are important. In the present study we analyze 53 diabetic patients with foot or hand ulcers for the characteristics of the bacterial community in their ulcers. 43 (81.13%) patients were having diabetic foot ulcers and the remaining 10 (18.86%) patients were with diabetic hand ulcers. 90.69% of patients with diabetic foot ulcers and 70% of diabetic hand ulcer patients were males. 39.53% of the diabetic patients were graded as Wagner 2 and there was no any patient with Wagner grade–5. Different types of Gram positive and Gram negative bacterial pathogens were isolated and identified from both the types of ulcers and they included Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus spp., E. coli, Proteus spp., Pseudomonas spp., Klebsiella spp. etc. Thus this study underlines the seriousness of bacterial colonization in diabetic ulcers and tries to aware about the importance of treatment with rationale use of antibiotics and with proper management.