2025 PRESENTER PROFILES
Under the Knife—Perioperative Considerations for Patients with Diabetic Foot Infections
Saturday, June 21, at 3:15 p.m. CT
Room W180 • McCormick Place Convention Center
Uncovering the Impact of Depression on Prolonged Postoperative Opioid Use—Exploring Disparities in Diabetic Foot Patients
Brandon M. Brooks, DPM, MPH
Staff Podiatrist,
Columbia VA Heath Care System
What is your presentation about?
Despite oftentimes having altered epicritic and protopathic sensation, patients with type 2 diabetes can still be at risk for consuming excess postoperative opioids following amputation due to untreated depressive disorders. I have proposed a “multidirectional, direct and indirect hypothesis” for causation between diabetic foot complications and depression, which I coined “the diabetic foot-pain-depression cycle.” Further, my team and I have coined DREADD (diabetes-related extremity amputation depression and distress) to describe the worsening of depressive symptoms and diabetes distress that can occur following any non-traumatic amputation, even if “only a toe.”
How do you hope your presentation will impact diabetes research or care?
We should all recognize that DREADD is a potentially serious complication of diabetes. Clinicians should screen their patients with diabetes for depression; surgeons should re-screen postoperatively following any non-traumatic amputation. We should understand that a non-traumatic amputation can still be a traumatic experience for patients.
How did you become involved with this area of diabetes research or care?
As a clinician, I noticed increased no-shows, poor adherence to the treatment regimen, and increasingly poor dietary choices, as evidenced by A1C, following non-traumatic amputations. I wanted to know why, so I teamed up with my twin brother, Bradley M. Brooks (a board certified psychiatrist and an addiction medicine physician), to find out. We found a gap in the literature, and I wanted to study it to improve outcomes for my patients.
