TITLE:
The Diabetic Foot Research in Arabs’ Countries
AUTHORS:
Owiss H. Alzahrani, Yousef S. Badahdah, Moataz S. Bamakrid, Abdullah S. Alfayez, Mossab S. Alsaeedi, Amro M. Mansouri, Hasan A. Alzahrani
KEYWORDS:
Diabetes Mellitus; Diabetic; Foot; Disorders; Arabs
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases,
Vol.3 No.3,
July
3,
2013
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.