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"A former soldier cut off two of his gangrene-ridden toes with a pair of tin metal pliers without anesthetic in his living room after becoming frustrated at a six-week delay to being operated on by the National Health Service (NHS)."
[...] "He says he eventually developed gangrene and his doctor said his infected toes would have to be removed. Rather than wait six weeks for the operation, Dibbins took matters into his own hands.
He says the operation, performed without pain killers and in his living room while biting on a rolled up towel, took about an hour. His wife of 40 years was in the house but says she did not want to look.
“Knowing that it would take at least another six weeks to get me in front of a surgeon again, that’s when I bit the bullet and cut off the toes,” Dibbins told the North Devon Journal.
“I did it because it’s what had to be done. My doctor told me my toes were going to kill me."
https://www.rt.com/uk/364152-gangrene-frostbite-toes-cut/
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Sunday October 30 2016, @07:22AM
As I understand it, the cause is not well understood. For a long time the leading theory was that the excess blood glucose itself caused nerve and capillary damage. Now, the idea that the same immune malfunction that destroyed the beta cells in the first place might also attack the lining of the blood vessels is gaining ground.
The conventional wisdom was that tightly controlling glucose levels would prevent amputations. However, since that is not proving out even now that we can control levels very closely with a pump, the immune theory is gaining ground.
In any event, the guy in TFA was supposed to have his lower right leg amputated. If his toes condition was diabetic related, it would be dry gangrene which moves slowly and doesn't invade healthy tissue. If he had done nothing, they would have literally dropped off on their own. Antibiotics wouldn't have changed anything.