The Diabetic Foot Research in Arabs’ Countries

OJEMD> Vol.3 No.3, July 2013 3 Open Access The Diabetic Foot Research in Arabs’ Countries

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DOI: 10.4236/ojemd.2013.33023 1,810 Downloads 5,542 Views Author(s) Leave a comment Owiss H. Alzahrani, Yousef S. Badahdah, Moataz S. Bamakrid, Abdullah S. Alfayez, Mossab S. Alsaeedi, Amro M. Mansouri, Hasan A. Alzahrani Affiliation(s) Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi Chair for Diabetic Foot Research, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT

Objective: To review all the studies on diabetic foot disorders (DFDs) that were published on the PubMed? site aiming to identify the contributions of the different Arabs’ countries in the world scientific literature on this topic. Methods: The PubMed? site was searched using different key words for searching all the abstracts on Diabetes mellitus (DM) and DFDs published from Arabs’ League countries (n = 22). For this review, the 22 countries were classified into 3 groups: Group 1 (G1): Gulf Council Countries (GCC) countries (n = 6), Group 2 (G2): African Arabs’ countries (n = 10), Group 3 (G3): Asian and/or Eastern Mediterranean Arabs’ countries (n = 6). All the abstracts on DM coming from all of the 22 Arabs’ countries were initially reviewed to locate the ones related to DFDs’ management. All of the articles related to DFDs were reviewed by the senior author. A publication index was created to allow a comparison between the productivity of various countries and correlate that to the population number. Results: By April 2012, a total of 906 articles were published on DM, out of them 115 (11.6%) were related to DFDs. The largest number of DM/DFDs research came from G1 countries (n = 437/51) followed by G2 (n = 307/38) and finally G3 (n = 162/26). The percentages of the studies related to DFDs were therefore: 11.6%, 12.3% and 20.6% respectively. Saudi Arabia was the top on the list of all studied countries with 31 studies related to DFDs out of the 187 on DM (16.5%). Conclusion: More research on DFDs is needed in most of the Arabs’ countries particularly those in the GCC region which reported very high prevalence rates and are expected to hold these rates for the coming decades. Also, special attention is needed for those low-income Arabs’ countries that had no contributions in DFDs’ research.

KEYWORDS

Diabetes Mellitus; Diabetic; Foot; Disorders; Arabs

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