 Hello, I am Dr. Priyatham Kamal, Consultant, Podiatric and Diabetic Foot Surgeon, KMC Hospital, B.R. Ambedkar Circle. Today I am going to discuss how to choose a footwear for a diabetic. You would have all heard that as a diabetic they need to wear footwear and in the market you have n number of options available. So how do we choose the right option for the right patient? So before I start I would like to remember the one thing that is there in the market is that the footwear are medicated. So I would like to say that there is no nothing called as a medicated footwear. So what we need is a proper protective footwear. Now when it say there is a protective footwear slippers or flip flops may not be very protective in diabetic because they will have neuropathy or they will be weakening of the muscles of the feet and they cannot hold the slippers and the slippers will slip from their feet. So what is the right footwear then? So a right footwear should be a sandal which will stay in the feet where the patient or the diabetic person need not hold it or does not depend upon his strength of the feet. So in such a footwear this footwear will stay in the feet and it will not slip off. The second thing is it has to be accommodative in case they have swelling of the feet or they have deformity of the foot. So it has to accommodate all the deformities so that the footwear should not rub on the feet and cause a second problem or another wound on the feet. So that is one more thing that you have to remember. Next is the material. What kind of a material? So it should be either a MCR or a MCP material which is commonly used and it should have a thick outsole so as to prevent from any injury from the outside. In case you have to choose a shoe, so how do you choose a shoe? Normally a person wears shoes, walks around for some time and then he decides that shoe is correctly fitting. But when it comes to a diabetic that's not the right way. So in a diabetic he has to measure the feet and buy a shoe which is one centimeter longer and one centimeter wider than his normal feet because even a tighter shoe might look okay for you. So measuring and buying the feet, the shoe is very important. Second always buy the shoe at the end of the day as usually there is some swelling in the feet so that by the end of the day if you have bought the shoe in the morning it might be tighter. Second again as I said for the sandal the shoe should be broader. It should have a wide toe box as you can see in this and it should be accommodative and usually it should not be a tapered shoe or a leather shoe. It should be a fabric shoe which is very soft so the shoe will not hamper or hurt the feet of the patient. Now what if the patient is having a wound? Yes if the patient is having a wound you can't buy a shoe or sandals over the counter because they will require customized footwear according to the wound of the patient where the ulcer whatever is there needs to be offloaded because if you are just taking over the counter without the proper customization that will cause more pressure on the wound and it will not allow healing of the wound. So as a diabetic when you are going to choose a shoe please remember this and we here at KFC Jyoti have all these facilities and the footwear customization in house. So in case if you have any issue you can always visit us. Thank you.