Diabetic foot disease is ‘one of the most common, serious, feared and costly complications of diabetes’, and foot ulcers can affect 15-25% of diabetic patients. An Irish study, which included all adults who underwent a non traumatic amputation between 2005 and 2009 in Ireland, reported that a person with diabetes was 22.3 times more likely to undergo a non-traumatic amputation than a person without diabetes. Avoiding this late-stage complication should be the motivation behind any efforts to improve foot health in diabetic patients.