Diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain or diabetic nerve pain is characterized by painful symptoms like burning, stabbing or shooting pain in the feet and legs or hands and arms.

This nerve condition, caused by diabetes, can make everyday activities like driving and walking challenging, and can cause feelings of frustration, sadness or fatigue.

In a new survey of more than 600 physicians treating diabetic nerve pain, a whooping 97 percent believe that the condition is most of the time misdiagnosed.

The said survey, sponsored by the National Pain Foundation (NPF) and Eli Lilly and Company revealed the following findings:

• Most physicians surveyed (66 percent) reported that one of the most commonly cited reasons leading to misdiagnosis is lack of information from their patients.
• Nearly two-thirds of physicians (62 percent) believe that tools or guidelines that diabetes patients can use to track diabetic nerve pain would be useful in better diagnosing diabetic nerve pain
• The vast majority of physicians (81 percent) want to find new ways to discuss diabetic nerve pain with their patients

Bottom-line is that, diabetic patients should be open to their physicians in discussing whatever condition they might be in. You might think that a shooting pain in your legs could well be just your imagination or caused by something else.
But it wouldn't hurt to discuss it with your doctor, he can make further observations to rule out or confirm if you are suffering from diabetic nerve pain.

The fact that this condition is often misdiagnosed is that because the patients didn't tell their doctors about it. Remember that your doctor is a doctor and not a psychic, so do tell.

To help you more in this area, the NPF and Lilly are launching a new educational program called Talk Beyond Pain: Understanding Diabetic Nerve Pain - a program that will provide patients who might be suffering from diabetic nerve pain with the information and vocabulary they need to better communicate with their physicians what they are feeling and experiencing.

Materials are available for download here.

Read the full report.