How are foot checks performed? - Diabetes.

So basically what you're looking at when you look at someone's foot, you're looking at the shape of the foot, you're looking at the integrity of the skin, you're looking to see whether there's any swelling, whether there's any redness, you're looking to see whether there are any hard skin. If there are areas of hard skin, those are things that should be attended to by podiatrists and not by patients using things like pumice stones or blades to cut those. You would test circulation by feeling for the arteries on the top of the foot and on the the inside of the ankle just below the inner ankle bone or the protuberance. You would look for how well the circulation is at the tip of the toes by just pressing them and seeing how quickly they become pink again. You would test their sensation by seeing whether can touch feel you touching them and beyond that you can use something called a monofilament which you put on the end of the toe and then you press put enough pressure to cause the buckle and if you have normal sensation you should be able to feel that. You can test that at different sites and you can work out a score. Beyond that there are much more refined tests which are not usually available except in specialist centres and even there we don't use them that often.