Professional Foot Health and Care

Education on the Diabetic foot

It is important to be aware of the risks associated with the diabetic foot if not properly attended to. If you have diabetes, it is essential to take extremely good care of your feet. This is because diabetes can lead to nerve damage in your feet, making it difficult to feel pain -- which means you can walk around with an injury or cut and not even know it.

These and other complications such as reduced blood flow to your feet, lead to more likelihood of infection. Healing is also much slower than normal. Each year, thousands of Americans undergo amputation -- 86,000 in 1997 alone.

At footDrHorsley we have adopted the Lower Extremity Amputation Prevention (LEAP) program sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services.

LEAP is a comprehensive prevention program developed at the Bureau of Primary Health Care that can dramatically reduce lower extremity amputations in individuals with diabetes mellitus, Hansen's disease, or any condition that results in loss of protective sensation in the feet.

The LEAP Program consists of five relatively simple activities:

1. Annual foot screening
2. Patient education
3. Daily self inspection of the foot
4. Appropriate footwear selection
5. Management of simple foot problems

Through the LEAP Program, we are able to show you how you can take better care of your feet and help you recognize foot problems early on when these problems can be treated successfully.