Diabetic Foot Care: Taking the Right Steps

Nowadays, the whole world is being concerned with a major health problem, which is diabetes. A very common symptom of diabetes is a diabetic foot ulcer. Foot disease affects one in six people with diabetes worldwide and this includes infection, ulceration, or destruction of tissues of the foot. Diabetes causes, loss of sensation in feet caused by diabetic neuropathy & Ischemia of lower limbs due to decreased blood flow in legs. This leads to numbness in feet in Diabetic patients and moreover, these feet are also starved of proper blood supply because of Diabetes. Over & above these factors, the trigger event usually is a small foot trauma, so small that it is usually forgotten by the patient, but this easily progresses to the formation of foot ulcer.

The only way to prevent this is by screening. The aim of screening is to identify high-risk Diabetic patients who can develop a foot ulcers. This is done by assessing the loss of sensation in the feet by 10 g monofilament test or biothesiometry test for neuropathy assessment and the ankle-brachial index measurement is the test to diagnose peripheral arterial disease. These tests are noninvasive, simple to do, and are available at Sweet Clinics. The Dictum is always “Prevention is better than Cure “. Good foot care and monitoring sugar control meticulously are the best ways to avoid these complications.