Incidence of Diabetic Foot Ulcer and its Predictors among Diabetic Patients Attending in Gedeo Zone Hospitals, Southern Ethiopia, 2020/2021

Background: The incidence of diabetic foot ulcer is increasing over previous decade with an increasing prevalence of diabetes mellitus. The previous study mainly focused on the prevalence of diabetic foot ulcer but unable to identify average time it takes for diabetic patients to develop DFU and difficult for early identification, prevention and treatment of the cause of diabetic foot ulcer. Objectives: To determine incidence of diabetic foot ulcer and its predictors among diabetes mellitus patients who were follow up at Gedeo zone hospitals, 2020/2021 GC. Materials and Methods: Institution-based Prospective follow up study was conducted in Gedeo zone hospitals From Nov 8/2020 to Sep 25/2021, Simple random sampling technique was used to select the study participants. The data collection was daily checked for completeness and consistency and it was entered into EPI data version 3.2 data and exported to Stata version 16 for analysis. The Kaplan-Meier estimation method was used and Cox proportional hazard model was applied. Results: A total of 208 patients were taken from 4 hospitals 1 referral hospital and 3 Primary hospitals. of the total of study participant diabetic foot ulcer was found to be 10.58%[6.40-14.76].Age greater than 55 years old [AHR=1.90; 95% CI: 1.56, 3.24], type II diabetes mellitus [AHR=3.02; 95% CI: 1.08, 5.40], Retinopathy [AHR=2.30; 95% CI: 1.43, 5.02], Nephropathy [AHR=3.56; 95% CI: 2.47, 5.70] were significantly associated with diabetic foot ulcer. Conclusion: This study concluded that 10.58% diabetic patients have foot ulcer. The main reasons to develop foot ulcer were being older age, retinopathy, and nephropathy were significantly associated with DFU. Keywords: Incidence, Diabetic Foot Ulcer, Predictors, Diabetes Mellitus, Ethiopia