UA News

A member of the College of Medicine's surgery department has won the 2010 Roger Pecoraro Award for his pioneering efforts in preventing amputations in diabetics.

Dr. David G. Armstrong, a professor of surgery at the University of Arizona and director of the UA's  Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance, or SALSA, has been selected as the 2010 Roger Pecoraro award winner and lecturer by the American Diabetes Association.

The Pecoraro Award is considered the highest honor in the field of amputation prevention and wound healing. The award is named in honor of Roger Pecoraro, who died prematurely two decades ago. Pecoraro was a pioneering physician in the field of amputation prevention whose work paved the way toward understanding the causes of limb-threatening wounds and infections and how to treat and prevent them.

A podiatrist, Dr. Armstrong has published many of the key works in the field of amputation prevention that have spanned an astonishing array of topics, including epidemiology, vascular and infectious diseases, wound healing, neurology, classification, team-building, biomechanics, biology and limb-salvage surgery. He has spoken to medical groups in more than 40 countries and has published more peer-reviewed manuscripts than any other podiatric physician in history.

Dr. Armstrong has mentored many of the leaders in the field. Among them, Dr. Lee C. Rogers, associate director of the Amputation Prevention Center at Valley Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, is the current chair of the ADA's foot care interest group. He will present the award to Armstrong.

"Professor Armstrong is the world's thought leader in amputation prevention. There is no one more deserving of this award and I am humbled by the task of giving it to him," Dr. Rogers said.

The award and lectureship will take place this June at the American Diabetes Association's annual symposium in Orlando, Fla. The meeting draws 15,000 physicians and scientists each year.

Armstrong also becomes the youngest recipient in the Pecoraro Award's two-decade history. "I am so honored even to have been considered for the Pecoraro," Armstrong said. "To be named alongside so many of my friends and mentors not only is a thrill, but also a responsibility to continue to make a difference."