We conducted a retrospective study of 3 years duration beginning from the 1st January 1997 to the 31st December 1999 in order to identify the epidemiology of major limb amputations in Seremban Hospital. Two hundred and four patients were included in this study out of which 65.7% were male and 34.3% were female. The mean age of the amputees was 39.7 years old. Non traumatic amputations constitute 85.8% of the cases mainly due to diabetic ulcers or gangrene (91%) followed by peripheral vascular disease (7%) and malignancy (2%). Traumatic amputations represent 14.2% of the cases with road-traffic accident as the major cause (82.8%) followed by industrial accident (17.2%). Lower limb amputations were performed in 97.5% of the cases with below knee amputations as the commonest procedure (72%), followed by above knee amputations (27%) and Syme amputations (1%). Five patients had upper limb amputations done. Four of them were below elbow amputations while one had forequarter amputation done of the left shoulder. Of note, there were increasing number of amputations done over the last three years with alarming increasing trends of traumatic amputation. The three main risk factors for major limb amputations are diabetes mellitus, male gender and road traffic accident.
In this study, the climate change, tsunami and biodiversity for 336 km coastline endangered at the South China Sea was investigated with the review for the past, current and prediction models for the future. The hydraulic study of the coastal area was conducted using a well-established 2D numerical model suite Delft3D. The study revealed that the generated earthquakes at the convergence zone in the last century are small (Mw7.3), the possibility that a megathrust earthquake event in the SCS basin occurs in the future. The study area comprises a narrow strip of vegetation notably dominated by Casuarina equisetifolia with other coastal plants. Mangrove forests are found along the coastline and estuaries that are overlaid with marine alluvial soils. The current paper is the first comprehensive study of the South China Sea, and the findings increase the awareness among the public to understand the risk associated with environmental pollution.