Flat Feet

Dr. Todd Brennan of Healthy Feet Podiatry discusses flat feet in children.

I’m Dr. Todd Brennan of Healthy Feet Podiatry.
Today, we’re gonna go over common concepts found with flatfoot in a child, which is typically flexible in nature. Today, we’re examining a 7-year-old child and looking at her feet to get an idea of just the basic concepts of a flexible flatfoot. Now, Mom, Dad, if your child has flatfoot, more likely than not, they got it from you because being flatfoot is hereditary. Basically, when you’re looking at a flatfoot when you do look at the feet, you do see a significant decrease in arch height and then the second, we’ll have our patient here stand so you can see how the foot does collapse. Ideally, the best way to treat this flatfoot in nature is to have your child in some type of custom orthotic. Your child may complain of fatigue, pain whether it’s just outside walking or after playing sports or running around with their friends and maybe even has hesitation to do so because of the pain that they have in their feet. Again, the best way to help that is to get some type of custom orthotic for their shoes. This is just a general idea of what a custom orthotic looks like. It’s made out of graphite, so it’s nice and thin and basically it fits to the bottom of their foot. Okay? And what that can do is it can go from shoe to shoe, whether it’s tennis shoes or some type of spike for their sporting event, to help basically support their arch and prevent collapse while they’re playing; therefore, eliminating all their pain. This is by far the best thing that we found in our profession up to this point to help accommodate those symptoms that most children have with painful flatfeet. What I’m gonna do now is have our patient stand up and just give you a general idea of what a collapsed flatfoot does look like. Here, you can see how much the arch does drop. This general area here is where the main tendon inserts that supports the arch. Ideally, her foot should look somewhat like this. Okay? That’s relatively what it should look like. When she stands, her weight collapses at the arch and watch as it dropped down. So, the best thing as I said for a patient like this would be custom orthotics. If you find that your son or daughter is complaining of pain while walking, pain while playing sports, or pain having, you know, having fun with their friends, please feel free to come and see us, myself or Dr. Krawetz, here at Healthy Feet Podiatry at either our Tampa or Brooksville location.