Infrared dermal thermometry is highly reliable in the assessment of patients with Charcot neuroarthropathy

BACKGROUND: Charcot neuroarthropathy (Charcot foot) is a serious limb-threatening complication most commonly seen in individuals with diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Although dermal thermometry is widely used by clinicians to assist in the diagnosis, monitoring, and management of the disease, there is limited high-quality evidence to support its reliability. Therefore, this study investigated the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of infrared dermal thermometry in patients with Charcot neuroarthropathy. METHODS: We collected clinical, demographic, health status, and foot examination information on 32 adults with Charcot neuroarthropathy from a metropolitan high-risk foot service in Melbourne, Australia. Infrared dermal thermometry assessments were conducted by two independent raters at 10 anatomical sites of the Charcot foot using both a (i) touch and (ii) non-touch technique. Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the two assessment techniques were evaluated using intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs), limits of agreement, standard error of measurement, and minimal detectable change statistics. RESULTS: Mean age was 59.9 (standard deviation [SD], 10.5) years, 68.8% were male, average duration of diabetes was 20.6 (SD, 15.1) years, 71.9% had type 2 diabetes, 93.8% had peripheral neuropathy, 43.8% had peripheral arterial disease, and 50% had previous foot ulceration. Charcot foot most commonly affected the tarsometatarsal joints (38.9%), had a median duration of 2.8 (interquartile range [IQR], 1.3 to 5.9) months, and a large proportion were being treated with total contact casting (69.4%). Overall, there was good to excellent intra-rater and inter-rater relative reliability for the ‘touch’ technique (ICC, 0.87 to 0.99; ICC, 0.83 to 0.98, respectively), and excellent intra-rater and inter-rater relative reliability for the ‘non-touch’ technique (ICC, 0.93 to 0.99; ICC, 0.91 to 0.99, respectively). In addition, measurement error was found to be relatively low across the 10 anatomical sites. CONCLUSIONS: Infrared dermal thermometry can now be used with confidence in clinical and research settings to provide a reliable assessment of skin temperature in patients with Charcot neuroarthropathy, using either a touch or non-touch technique at 10 commonly used testing sites. A non-touch technique, however, was observed to have slightly higher reliability indicating it may be associated with less measurement error than the touch technique.