Use of Assistance Protocols for the Screening of Diabetic Neuropathy in Primary Care: An Integrative Review

The objective was to conduct a survey on scientific evidence regarding the screening for diabetic neuropathy and the use of care protocols in the period from 2015 to 2018. It is an integrative review, with a search for articles in the LILACS, SCIELO, BDENF and databases MEDLINE. Twelve articles were selected, from 2015 to 2018, analyzed using Strauss and Corbin and the IRaMuTeQ software. The largest number of publications occurred in 2017, with 9 (75%) on MEDLINE, all publications (100%) are quantitative in nature, there was a predominance of 9 articles (75%) with Level of Evidence 4. The majority, 11 (91.6%) highlighted the importance of the effectiveness of the association of sociodemographic data and lifestyle, neurological tests and the use of questionnaires. In the Word Cloud, the three most cited words were Peripheral (64), Diabetic (45) and Neuropathic (43). The most cited tests were Monofilament (8) and Tuning Fork (3) and the type of evaluation was the Michigan Neuropathy Screening Instrument MNSI (7). Four categories were identified, namely: “Important risk factors in the screening for Diabetic Neuropathy (DN)”; “ND and associated factors”; "Prevention of diabetic foot" and "Application of MNSI for screening of DN and evaluation of muscle strength for degree of impairment of DN". It is concluded that there is an approach on the forms of neuropathic screening, however the presence of assistance protocols was not identified, which would aim to facilitate this screening. It is hoped that this study can contribute to the formulation of care protocols for the screening of DN.