Amputations

Los Angeles has one of the highest diabetes-related amputation rates in the country. Yet vascular surgeon Dr. George Andros can't seem to draw enough attention to the problem, which has skyrocketed not just here but nationally. "It's not sexy," he acknowledges. "Who cares about diabetic feet? It has no sizzle." Over the last 15 years, the U.S. rate of foot amputations from complications of diabetes has soared, approaching 100,000 annually, according to studies and government statistics.

Here's some good news for a change from the diabetes front: Lower-limb amputations due to diabetes complications dropped 65% from 1996 to 2008. In a study published this week in the journal Diabetes Care, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from two national studies that looked at diabetes prevalence and nontraumatic lower-extremity amputations among people age 40 and over. Those types of amputations are typically caused by circulation problems due to diabetes, not by injuries.

She is 19 years old, with an angelic face and big, heavy-lidded eyes. A bright young woman close to graduating from high school, a rare accomplishment in Haiti. As her sister runs a hand through her hair, Sounlove Zamour tells how the Jan. 12 earthquake split her family's house in two, how it swallowed up her father, how it robbed her of her legs -- both gone now, below the knee. She manages a feeble smile. Zamour belongs to a heartbreaking new class in Haiti: earthquake amputees.

Marine Lance Cpl. Jorge Ortiz is in pain. A combat photographer, Ortiz was taking pictures of a captured weapons cache in Sangin, Afghanistan, on Jan. 15 when he stepped on a buried explosive device. Photos: Rehabilitating injured vets The blast ripped off his legs above the knees and snapped off four fingers on his left hand and the thumb on his right hand. Classified as a triple amputee, Ortiz is now an inpatient at the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto — one of four VA centers nationwide staffed and equipped specifically to treat the most grievously wounded U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A Florida hospital where doctors accidentally cut the wrong foot off a patient began a policy Thursday requiring staff to write the word "No" with a felt marker on patients' limbs that are not to be cut off. Willie King, 51, had surgery to remove his gangrenous right foot at Tampa's University Community Hospital last month. But he awoke to find that Dr. Rolando Sanchez had removed his left foot.

Two American brothers sentenced in Pakistan to have a hand and foot amputated for a bank robbery were freed from jail Monday after winning an appeal. Charles, 29, and Daniel Boyd, 23, converts to Islam who came to Pakistan from Florida and have taken Muslim names, emerged from Peshawar's central jail beaming with joy and embraced their supporters. A special court set up to dispense speedy justice for serious crimes had sentenced both to have the right hand and left foot amputated.

Doctors have amputated the lower portion of defensive end Jamie McPherson's right leg because of complications from a knee injury in Southern Mississippi's game last month against Samford. McPherson, a fifth-year senior from Grand Saline, Tex., had surgery Monday and was reported in stable condition Tuesday in the intensive care unit of a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital. "He had numerous surgeries Thursday through Saturday," Coach Jeff Bauer said. "He has had some clotting problems.

Columnist and novelist Art Buchwald is in a Washington-area hospice after having part of his leg amputated, his assistant said Thursday. Cathy Crary said the leg was amputated below the knee because it wasn't getting enough blood because of a vascular condition. The 80-year-old Buchwald also has a kidney problem, she said, but wasn't undergoing dialysis. "He's really doing very well," Crary said.

Doctors said Friday they will have to amputate most of the left arm of KABC-TV Channel 7 news reporter Adrienne Alpert, who suffered severe burns in a freak accident earlier this week. The announcement came after a four-member surgical team amputated the middle finger of her right hand and the big toe of her left foot.

A 38-year-old man amputated his own leg and crawled to his car to reach help after he was trapped under a boulder in the mountains, hospital authorities said Wednesday. William Jeracki took the desperate action to save his life and then dragged himself a half mile to his car and drove for help. "He tried for a long period of time to move the boulder and to free his leg.

Grim combat statistics that one military doctor called "unbelievable" show U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries last year, including a tripling of amputations of more than one limb. A study by doctors at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most wounded troops are sent before returning to the U.S., confirmed their fears: The battlefield has become increasingly brutal. In 2009, 75 service members brought to Landstuhl had limbs amputated.

The premise Twenty-seven-year-old Aron Ralston ( James Franco) is a mechanical engineer and thrill-seeker. He is in Utah's Blue John Canyon when he falls down a narrow canyon, and his arm is pinned by a large chalkstone boulder. He watches as his fingers turn blue and gray from insufficient blood flow (ischemia). Though he doesn't appear to be in pain, he is unable to free himself. He has very little food and water, and finally, as he grows dehydrated, he drinks his own urine.

Two at the Telluride Film Festival, three at the Toronto International Film Festival and one at the Mill Valley Film Festival. If that were a list of trophies for the new movie "127 Hours," which opens Friday, the filmmakers would be overjoyed. In fact, it's a partial tally of people who have collapsed during early screenings of the movie about a real-life hiker who amputated his forearm after a falling boulder pinned his hand in a remote canyon. "I started to feel like I was going to throw up," said Courtney Phelps, who was watching "127 Hours" at a recent Producers Guild of America screening in Hollywood and grew ill just as the amputation scene ended.

Another employee has lost part of a finger at Bimbo Bakeries, a company with plants statewide whose record of workplace accidents was highlighted by The Times last year as an example of inaction by California health and safety officials. In addition, the company failed to disclose the 2007 amputation of a different worker's finger, officials at the Division of Occupational Health and Safety said last week. That brings the company's total number of amputations to nine since 2003, when a worker lost most of her arm in a bread machine.

Jonathan Metz had given up. He had tried pulling his left arm out of his basement boiler, where it had become lodged while he was cleaning. He had tried screaming for help. When the arm became infected, after about 18 hours, he even tried cutting it off. Nothing worked. And he realized he might die there on the blood-soaked basement floor. Metz, 31, talked in public about his ordeal for the first time this week at the hospital where he underwent surgery. His voice hoarse and his face bathed in light from TV camera crews, he spoke matter-of-factly about his experience.

"House, M.D.", season finale Fox, Monday, May 17, 8 p.m. Episode: "Help Me" The premise: A crane collapses onto a building in Trenton, N.J. Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) and Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) arrive with a team of doctors to help the fire department and emergency rescue workers treat the wounded. House finds Hanna, 25, trapped under the collapsed concrete. Her leg is stuck and the team is unable to free it. Cuddy suggests immediate amputation to treat the "compartment syndrome" she believes has developed from the injury, before it kills Hanna's tissue and causes an increase in potassium levels, possibly leading to cardiac arrest.

Florida has suspended the license of a doctor who amputated a woman's toe without consent, five months after he removed the wrong leg of another patient. Dr. Rolando Sanchez "presents an immediate and serious danger to the health, safety and welfare of the public," said an emergency order from the state Agency for Health Care Administration. Sanchez, of Tampa, gained notoriety in February because of the case of patient Willie King.

Dave Dravecky, the former San Francisco Giant pitcher who overcame cancer in his left arm to pitch again, will have the arm amputated because of a recurrence of the cancer. According to Dr. Murray Brennan, chief of surgery at New York Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dravecky will undergo the amputation Tuesday. "It is likely that the cancer has recurred in Dave's arm," Brennan said in a statement Wednesday. "But regardless, the course of treatment (amputation) is required."

She is 19 years old, with an angelic face and big, heavy-lidded eyes. A bright young woman close to graduating from high school, a rare accomplishment in Haiti. As her sister runs a hand through her hair, Sounlove Zamour tells how the Jan. 12 earthquake split her family's house in two, how it swallowed up her father, how it robbed her of her legs -- both gone now, below the knee. She manages a feeble smile. Zamour belongs to a heartbreaking new class in Haiti: earthquake amputees.

The teenager lay dazed amid the settling dust and debris, his leg trapped by a fallen concrete wall. He sensed that he was going to die. So he made a decision: He would cut off his own limb to save his life. Ignoring the major blood loss, taking deep breaths as he concentrated on the terrible task at hand, the 18-year-old construction worker cut halfway through his right leg just below the kneecap. Finally, too weak to continue, he begged for help, and a fellow worker finished the job for him in the aftermath of the magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Sumatra in September.