What is a Charcot foot?

So, a Charcot foot, Charcot is named after a French physician and it is due with a misshapen foot. So I've mentioned in another snippet, if you imagine your foot to be one of those low weight bridges that you drive across that have restrictions on the weight of the lorry that goes across, what can happen? The reason those lorries are not supposed to go across is because over time what happens is that the bridge which cannot take those frequent excursions across it starts to break down. Now that's essentially what happens with a Charcot foot because you've got nerve damage to the foot that affects the local circulation. You can have these small fractures, the circulation increases, the bones become quite soft. Because you may lack pain perception, the foot moves in to put it more specifically, the foot is made up a number of different joints and going back to that bridge analogy they're like those stones of the bridge each one of those can move beyond where it should go and the cement breaks as it were as with the bridge and then you've you've got a bit of the stone sticking out and the worst scenario is it can collapse in on itself and you have what's called a rocker bottom foot like a rocking horse bottom or the bottom of a rocking horse. Now that the foot isn't really built to withstand those pressures and these when the bones are out of joint you can have areas of pressure from footwear from just you walking around and that can then cause ulceration. And then once you have ulceration, you get entry of infection. But beyond that, it also affects just the way you walk. So that's why we try to maintain the integrity of the shape of the foot as much as possible by using arch support. I mean, people cannot use arch support without having diabetic foot disease, you know, and that it It can cause pain in your knee if you don't use proper arch support because you've got flat feet. So it's not just diabetic patients who have to use these what are called orthotic aids, but these are things that we often use for patients. We send patients to orthotists who often take the imprints of the shape of their feet and produce bespoke shoes for them. Now these shoes are there to protect them from getting further complications as a consequence of what they already have.