Bexar County holds the highest incidence of lower limb amputations due to diabetes in both Texas and the United States, with a rate of 69.9 per 100,000 hospitalizations, an investigation by El País found.
Latino men are disproportionately at risk in this county, which is heavily influenced by the Hispanic community. Located just 150 miles from the Mexican border, 61% of Bexar's population is Latino immigrant or of Latino descent.
In the United States, Latinos statistically face some serious challenges to manage chronic diseases, such as diabetes, as they represent nearly half of the total uninsured population in the United States.
Nearly one in five Hispanic Americans lack health insurance, a proportion almost three times higher than that of non-Hispanic white Americans, according to a study by the Center for Migration Studies.
The percentage of Latinos who are insured has increased in recent years, but recent studies have suggested that the improvements could stop or even reverse as the expansion of eligibility for the pandemic ends in March 2023.
Immigration status, economic reasons, not speaking English, lack of prior diagnosis, or cultural barriers such as mistrust of the medical profession may be among the main reasons, but the fact is that Latinos tend to arrive at emergency rooms when it is too late to save their limbs.
In the case of diabetes, Hispanic patients tend to seek medical care later, when the disease has progressed, and they may receive the diagnosis at the same time as news of a needed amputation, according to a study by the American Heart Association cited by the outlet.
Diabetes tends to hit the southern states of the country harder, but Bexar stands out even among those numbers. Just over a tenth of the county's residents have been diagnosed with the disease, according to the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, El País reported in its article.
- Bexar accounts for 7 in 10 amputations in Texas, approximately 2,000 per year.
- Between 2018 and 2021, the mortality rate will also increase by 40 percent.
- It is the second county with the most deaths from diabetes in the United States, just surpassed by San Bernardino in California and immediately followed by the Bronx in New York.
"You see how much diabetes impacts people, it affects their personal and professional lives, their quality of life. Many of these patients are immigrants, just like me, immigrants who are not white, who have to be able to walk, drive, use their legs, it really hurts," Michael Sobolevsky, a Russian-born podiatrist who works in Texas, told the outlet.
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