A NEW APPROACH TO FOOT PROBLEMS CAUSED BY PRESSURE AT DIABETIC FOOT PATIENTS: TOTAL ORTHOPEDIC FOOTWEAR.

Background and Objective: Diabetic foot (DF) is a syndrome mainly caused by pressure developed with neuropathic and peripheral artery complication of Diabetes Mellitus (DM) with comorbid infection, and has negative effects on both physical and psychological health of patients. Increasing foot pressure causes some footwear related problems, thus there is some alternative footwear for DF patients. However, recent alternative footwear types only focus on sole, and other pressure points (tarsus, metatarsus, foot surface) are dismissed. In this research, it was aimed to compare pressure and pain levels of sole-oriented footwear (full orthopedic) and whole foot-oriented footwear (total orthopedic). Methods: In the research, a total of 30 patient files (16 females and 14 males) having DF with Type I or II DM were retrospectively subjected to study. Arterial pressures (systolic-diastolic), total foot pressure, foot metatarsus and tarsus pressures at initial, 10th, 60th and 120th minutes were compared with both footwear types with pain levels. Results: According to results, total orthopedic footwear pressure results were lower than full orthopedic footwear for all parameters. At initial point, differences between all pressure parameters found to be statistically insignificant (p>0,05). On the other hand, differences between two footwear types at the 10th minute for right and left foot were statistically significant (p<0,05). In addition, all foot pressure parameters showed statistically significant differences at 60th and 120th-minute results. Conclusion: Results of the study shows that total orthopedic footwear significantly reduces feet pressure in DF, and increases foot health quality of DF patients. Moreover, the developed footwear may help to reduce foot related other health problems, especially infectious comorbid diseases.