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Dr. Mica Murdoch had been with Broadlawns Medical Center’s foot and ankle surgery department for about a year before being named the director of the Amputation Prevention Center earlier this summer.

Dr. Mica Murdoch, shown looking at a foot x-ray, was named the new director of the Amputation Prevention Center at Broadlawns earlier this summer.

The center includes four doctors who use conservative and surgical treatments to help roughly 1,100 patients a year, in addition to providing education and preventative care. Murdoch said he’s been impressed with the center’s state-of-the-art treatments and high success rate, in addition to its well-trained faculty and physicians.

Q. What kind of impact has the center had for patients?
We have a 25 percent lower amputation rate than the national average. It gives patients a much better quality of life if they can preserve as much or all of their limb as possible. The significance of amputations is that statistically, it decreases the mortality by about 10 years for each amputation a diabetic receives. It’s really a significant factor for showing how well your disease is being managed.

Q. What measures are taken to help drop the rate of diabetic-related foot amputations?

For diabetics, the number one prevention mechanism is to control their blood sugar, which then will prevent the onset of neuropathy and the progression of disease that will result in ulcerations. If they can control their blood sugar, then the disease doesn’t affect their nerves, their vascular supply, all of those things that are important in maintaining a healthy body and preventing ulceration and your ability to respond quickly to an infection.

Once they have an ulceration, we try to prevent it from becoming worse and if they develop an infection, we try to treat it immediately. If they have a wound, we try to heal it as quickly as possible and educate the patient on offloading and the kinds of things that are necessary for them to get that wound healed and to stay closed.

Q. What goals do you have for the center?

We want to:

• Provide the absolute best care we can for our patients.

• Stay up to date.

• Reduce our amputation rate to as low as we possibly can.

• Make sure that we provide the patients the education and the training they need.

• Be able to provide care for as much as the population as possible.

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