How to build shoes for patients with diabetic foot syndrome

Guidelines for the construction of orthopedic shoes in the therapy of diabetic foot syndrome offers a design protocol that was developed by an interdisciplinary working group on the basis of the available scientific evidence.

The care of people with diabetic foot syndrome is one of the most demanding tasks in pedorthics. Sufficient scientific knowledge is not available for all the activities involved. Some interventions are still based on practical experience.
The frequent demand to use scientific results as a basis for the design of shoes and footbeds is therefore not always easy to fulfill. A Dutch working group led by Sicco A. Bus has already addressed this issue in 2019 and compiled the existing knowledge on the care of diabetic foot syndrome. In their state of the art design protocol, they give specific advice on how to proceed in the individual steps of therapy. They also always disclose which of these indications are supported by scientific studies and which recommendations resulted from the consensus of the working group, which included not only scientists but also practitioners from the orthopedic footwear industry.
The paper was published in the journal Diabetes/Metabolism Research an Review and is available free of charge through the U.S. National Library of Medicine website.