High prevalence of chronic kidney disease among patients with diabetic foot: A cross-sectional study at a tertiary hospital in China.

Objective: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a severe complication of diabetes mellitus (DM). However, the prevalence of CKD among DM patients with diabetic foot (DF) is unknown. Accordingly, we conducted a cross-sectional study at a tertiary hospital to explore the prevalence of CKD among DF patients.

Methods: A total of 42 132 inpatients with DM were enrolled from May 2015 to October 2018. Four hundred and forty-seven DF patients were selected, and 116 patients with incomplete data were excluded. CKD was defined as an estimated glomerular filtration rate < 60 mL/min per 1.73 m or presence of proteinuria (urine protein ≥1). We compared the CKD prevalence of DF patients with non-DF patients and general CKD patients hospitalized in China. Multivariable regression analysis was performed to explore the relationship between different variables in DF patients and CKD.

Results: A total of 361 DF patients aged 67.9 ± 12.2 years were analyzed. Of these patients, 63.7% of were males. The prevalence of CKD was 49.0% (n = 177), which was higher than that observed for the general inpatients (4.5%, n = 871 742). However, 59.9% of CKD patients were not diagnosed during their hospitalizations. In the multivariable logistic regression analysis, after adjusting for potential confounders, the following variables were correlated with CKD: uric acid (odds ratio (OR) = 1.49, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.22-1.82), homocysteine (OR = 1.05, 95% CI = 1.00-1.10), and HBA1C (OR = 1.23, 95% CI = 1.04-1.47).

Conclusion: This study revealed that the prevalence of CKD among DF patients was high, and special attention should be paid to these patients.