Standard care plus
Tecnimed, ®, Charcot neuroarthropathy
REMISSION
Participants received usual care for assessment and management of Charcot neuroarthropathy. We standardised assessment of foot temperature to monitor Charcot neuroarthropathy by using the same device for all the measurements taken during the study, the Thermofocus 01500A3® (Tecnimed, Varese, Italy). Every 14 days a research team member measured the temperature of both feet at five different sites. Temperatures were collected four times after removal of the off-loading device: 0, 5, 10, and 15 minutes. It was not possible to control ambient air temperature, in the clinical rooms used in this study. In this feasibility study the first timepoint at which the temperature difference was assessed as ≤2 °C at the site overlying the Charcot neuroarthropathy was used as the marker for remission. At remission participants received a study specific MRI. We used the term ‘standard care plus’ for this arm of the study to highlight differences to usual practice in the protocol for temperature measurement, and the additional study specific MRI at remission.