Reliability of infrared thermography in type 2 diabetic mellitus patients

Abstract

Diabetic foot is a common complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) patients. To measure the skin foot temperature using infrared thermography (IR) may be an appropriate method. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the reliability of IR for skin foot temperature in type 2 DM patients. Thirty participants were recruited. Each patient was measured 3-times consecutively, in both feet. They were instructed to take a rest for 10 min and their feet were clean prior to the trial. The results show that the skin foot temperature using IR had a high reliability in all 6 areas of both feet with the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) between 0.98 to 0.99 (p-value < 0.001). In conclusion, infrared thermography has excellent reliability. Therefore, it could be used as an alternative method for follow up physical therapeutic treatment and for using as an important variable in research.