Diabetic foot disease: a systematic literature review of patient-reported outcome measures

Diabetic foot disease is one of the most serious and expensive complications of diabetes. Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) analyse patients’ perception of their disability, functionality and health. The goal of this work was to conduct a systematic review regarding the specific PROMs related to the evaluation of diabetic foot disease and to extract and analyse the values of their measurement properties.

Electronic databases included were PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, PEDro, Cochrane, SciELO and EMBASE. The search terms used were foot, diabet*, diabetic foot, questionnaire, patient-reported outcome, self-care, valid*, reliabil*. Studies whose did not satisfy the Critical Appraisals Skills Programme (CASP) Diagnostic Study Checklist were excluded. The measurement properties extracted were: Internal Consistency, Test–retest, Inter-rater and Intra-rater, Standard Error of Measurement, Minimum Detectable Measurement Difference, Content Validity, Construct Validity, Criterion Validity and Responsiveness.

The PROMs selected for this review were 12 questionnaires. The Diabetic foot self-care questionnaire (DFSQ-UMA) and the Questionnaire for Diabetes Related Foot Disease (Q-DFD) were the PROMs that showed the highest number of completed measurement properties.

According to the results, it is relevant to create specific questionnaires for the evaluation of diabetic foot disease. It seems appropriate to use both DFSQ-UMA and Q-DFD when assessing patients with diabetic foot disease.