The statistical survey has been made on 257 amputations of 225 army amputees who were in 3rd R.O.K. Army Hospital in the period of two year and two months, between June, 1960 to August, 1962.
Main cause of amputations were explosive injury of 89(39.5%), train accident of 45(20.1%) and truck accident 33(14.8%). The high rate of train accident may caused from carelessness of the soldiers who are on leave.
The initial injury affected the extremities in order of frequency to expose to the danger but minor amputation rate of the feet were less because of well protection of the feet by army boots.
Most of amputations were done on ideal level of middle or lower one-third in 84.5 per cent and 19 were major multiple amputations.
218 complications of amputation stump were noted and 159 operations were carried out, mostly revision or reamputations.
The prostheses fitting was done from one and a half -month tofour months post-op. amputation. Late fitting prostheses showed more satisfactory training program and functional result of restoration.
With the prostheses, 71.6 per cent of patients prooved their functional restoration for daily activity in fully or partially. others classified as self-care plus 36(13.4%), self-care minus 28(10.5 %), cosmetic plus 8(3.0%) and not feasible 4(1.5%).
The 40(15%) of patients were classified as grade one functional disablings on, this statistics in spite of only 19(8.4%) patients were granted grade one disability evaluation by our R.O.K. Army disability evaluation chart. The differences come from the anatomical classification of the amputation but functional disability. On this point of view, disability should be evaluated by lower grade either functional restoration or anatomical level for the amputees.
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