Amputation: Purpose
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Arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers, and toes can all be amputated. Most amputations involve small body parts such as a finger, rather than an entire limb. About 65, 000 amputations are performed in the United States each year.
Amputation is performed for the following reasons:
- to remove tissue that no longer has an adequate blood supply
- to remove malignant tumors
- because of severe trauma to the body part
The blood supply to an extremity can be cut off because of injury to the blood vessel, hardening of the arteries, arterial embolism, impaired circulation as a complication of diabetes mellitus, repeated severe infection that leads to gangrene, severe frostbite, Raynaud's disease, or Buerger's disease.
More than 90% of amputations performed in the United States are due to circulatory complications of diabetes. Sixty to eighty percent of these operations involve the legs.
— Tish Davidson
