Diabetic neuropathy (DN) is a common disorder and is defined as signs and symptoms of peripheral nerve dysfunction in a patient with diabetes mellitus in whom other causes of peripheral nerve dysfunction have been excluded. Careful clinical examination is recommended to detect DN, as absence of symptoms should never be assumed to indicate an absence of signs. The objective of this study was: 1) to assess the sensitivity and specificity of simple bedside tests for diagnosis of sensory and autonomic diabetic neuropathy (DN) (pain sensation, light touch, vibration sensation, pressure sensation, resting tachycardia and postural hypotension) as compared with standardized electrophysiological tests in the diagnosis of diabetic peripheral and autonomic neuropathy in the busy diabetes clinic of DEMPU, Cairo University. 2) to detect the risk factors that may be related to the development of DN including: modifiable factors as smoking, mean preprandial & postprandial blood glucose levels, mean HbA1c, hypertension and dyslipidemia; and non-modifiable factors as age, gender, duration of diabetes, age at onset of diabetes and height.A total of 60 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (23 males and 37 females) attending the Diabetes clinic at DEMPU in Abo Elrish hospital, Cairo University, were included in this study. Subjects (ranging from 8.6-31.9 yrs) with duration of diabetes of 1.1 -23.9 years had clinical assessment done including taking full medical history, testing for pain sensation using pin prick test, light touch sensation, vibration sensation with a 128 Hz tuning fork, pressure sensation 10 g Semmes-Weinstein monofilament, ankle reflex and detecting the presence of resting tachycardia and postural hypotension compared against the standard criterion of nerve conduction studies.The prevalence of peripheral neuropathy was 36.7% detected with the four simple bedside tests and with sensitivity and specificity ranging from 40% to 73.33% and 91.43% to 97.14% respectively. Pin prick was found to be the most reliable single bedside test in detecting peripheral neuropathy with sensitivity of 73.33% and specificity of 91.43%. Combining 2 (pin prick & pressure), or 4 bedside tests (pin prick, pressure, light touch and vibration tests) didn't improve sensitivity in detecting peripheral neuropathy when compared with standardized electrophysiological tests.The sensitivity of resting tachycardia and postural hypotension as indicators of autonomic neuropathy compared to NCV was 72.73% and 27.27% respectively and their specificity was 84.62% and 100% respectively. Age, duration of DM, smoking, BMI, preprandial blood glucose levels, patient’s compliance, elevated TG and cholesterol levels were found to be significant risk factors for the development of DN in the clinical neuropathy group while in the group of patients that underwent NCV studies, only smoking was found to be a statistically significant risk factor.