This last year I have had a HUGE influx of club foot patients. Coming to Haiti I knew absolutely NOTHING about club foot treatments. Rightfully so I am an OT not a PT...lol... I don't know why there has been such a rise in the number of kids I am seeing, if it is the word is getting out or if some of the babies are ZIKA and club feet is another side effect. No matter the reason I had a lot of kids to treat. So for the last year I have been trying to do club foot casting with about 15 kids. IT started to be come difficult to just stop what I was doing every time a kid showed up to take a cast off and put a new cast on. I also originally was casting for 4 weeks at a time.
A few months ago I started to do some research about club foot casing and found the Poinsetti Method of Casting. I read some articles online and decided that I really needed to go get trained. I started following his model and switched to taking off and putting on the casts every week instead of every 4 weeks. This caused ALOT more work for me and so I created Club Foot Friday's in which I scheduled all the club foot kids to come back on Friday Mornings.
I was very blessed that when STAND was here a few weeks ago that they had a Haitian Prosthetist that was trained in the casting and took the time to educate me. I realized I was doing some things wrong with the casting (nothing that was hurting the kids but I was not getting the best results either). So I learned from him and changed my method up some.
Dr. Del the orthopedic surgeon evaluated for surgery 15 of the club foot kids. He was able to due the full club foot surgery on 3-4 of the kids but the rest there was not space or they were too little. BUT he did do the Achilles Tendon Tenatomy and taught me how to do them so that I can do it when he is not in country. It is very common with club foot casting that the Tenatomy has to occur during the casting process for the casting to be effective. It is a very minor procedure that can be done under local anesthesia but I was thankful that I got to practice and perform all the ones I did when the kids were under complete anesthesia.
All the kids that received the Tenatomy will continue the club foot casting with me over the next few months. Then they will transition to the boots and bar or AFO's. Please keep each of these sweet kiddos in your prayers as they recover and continue with therapy.
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