Acute Neuropathic Joint Disease A medical emergency?

Charcot neuroarthropathy, or, as it isalso known, neuropathic joint dis-ease (NJD), is a particularly severe form of osteoarthritis. It is recognized by severe joint damage in the context of rel-atively little pain in the presence of neu-ropathy and associated with characteristic radiographic changes in well-established disease. Patients with diabetes are at par-ticular risk of NJD; permanent disability through foot deformity or amputation as a consequence of peripheral neuropathy (1) and diabetes is now the leading cause of NJD. The midfoot or ankle joints are most commonly affected in diabetic pa-tients (2). The limited epidemiologic data on NJD suggest that 0.1–0.4 % of pa