Patient awareness of loss of protective sensation in the diabetic foot: an opportunity for risk reduction?

Background Peripheral sensory neuropathy is a common complication in diabetes. Neuropathy is the single most powerful risk factor for diabetic foot amputation. Often foot care efforts are thwarted by the phenomenon of inadvertent injury, from events which may appear to the clinician as chronic and ignorant self-neglect on the part of neuropathic clients. This study aimed to determine the proportion of a study population of people with diabetes and peripheral neuropathy who were simultaneously unaware of this sensory loss.