Just five questions to assess an amputee’s quality of life

WHILE lower leg amputations for diabetes sufferers are on the decrease as more research becomes available for patients and professionals to prevent and care for such outcomes, the amount of amputations below the ankle, also known as minor amputations, have been increasing since 2010.

Now, a senior lecturer in podiatry at the University of Huddersfield is conducting a project – the first of its kind – to discover methods that will accurately measure a patient’s quality of life after a minor amputation, by asking the patients themselves.

Natasha Levy, from the University’s School of Human and Health Sciences is currently undertaking the research for her PhD.  She hopes the research will lead to an overall improvement in the quality of care for patients who have undergone minor amputations by demonstrating best practice in the field.

“Currently, the only way to measure a patient’s quality of life is a generic questionnaire of five questions,” said Natasha. 

“Each year the amputation rates are reported annually across the country for different Hospital Trusts.  They never mention the patients or ask about changes to their lives.  Really there is no context at all,” she added.

An overview of Natasha’s research was published by the Diabetic Foot Journal in an article entitled Minor amputation and quality of life: is it time to give the patient a voice?.

This led to her being approached by Diabetes UK to present and conduct a workshop at the inaugural Diabetes UK sponsored conference, Challenges and Solutions in Diabetes Footcare, held at the University.  Conference delegates included health care professionals and academics from the UK, working with patients with diabetic foot-related problems.

Natasha said the feedback left by delegates who attended the workshop was really surprising. 

“Even though the conference was geared to health professionals working within this environment, hardly any of them were aware that the five questions included in the questionnaire were the actual outcome measures used and were really shocked,” she said.

Prior to entering the world of academia, Natasha was a practicing NHS podiatrist for 13 years and during that time dealt with thousands of patients.  Because of the experience in practice the importance of research being centred around the patient and ultimately for their benefit, has never left her mind-set.

She hopes that by creating a more tailored questionnaire, the best quality of life outcomes will be made clearer and easier to understand for patients, carers and clinicians.

This research is being conducted with the collaboration of the Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and is being supervised by the University’s Dr Warren Gillibrand and Dr Susie Kola-Palmer.

·       The article Minor amputation and quality of life: is it time to give the patient a voice? was authored by Natasha Levy, Dr Warren Gillibrand and Dr Susie Kola-Palmer and published in the Diabetic Foot Journal 20(4): 228–34 (2017).