Vascular surgeon Lijckle van der Laan started to notice in April: he and his colleagues at the Amphia Hospital in Breda had to perform more and more large amputations. Remove a leg instead of a toe. It concerned older people with, for example, arteriosclerosis.
They had wounds on the foot, gangrene or a painful, sometimes already black toe. “They did not dare to go to the doctor, they arrived too late in the hospital”, says Van der Laan. With all its consequences.
The stagnation of regular care due to the corona crisis has led to an increase in the number of large amputations in more hospitals, according to a tour of the NOS along 17 hospitals. This was particularly the case in North Brabant and Limburg.
The Amphia Hospital is the only one that has kept numbers. Van der Laan and the vascular team saw 19 patients with foot problems between March and the end of April. In other years, 15 percent of the procedures involved amputation of a large part of the leg; now 42 percent.
The results of Van der Laan’s research will soon be published in the scientific journal Annals of Vascular Surgery, but are still standing not online.
Fear of asking for care
“One of the main reasons is the fear that has been created to ask for care,” says Van der Laan. Patients were afraid to go to the doctor, they said. They were often not allowed to come by either. GPs made as many consultations as possible by telephone. “But you really have to see these patients to determine how serious the wound is.”
In the case of the patients whose leg was amputated, such a check was not timely. “If you are late, the dead tissue moves from the toe to the forefoot. At a certain point you can’t make it anymore. Then you have to amputate a large part of the leg.”
Van der Laan also puts a hand in his own bosom. Hospitals should have done more to receive patients at the outpatient clinic, he now believes:
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