Pediatric Foot & Ankle Deformity Management with Serial Casting: Why & How

Course overview

LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE - Pre-course readings and review materials are assigned in order to open more contact time for labs and videotaped cases. Enrollees are expected to arrive prepared. TARGET AUDIENCE: This course is designed for the practitioner who has experience in working with children with CNS dysfunction and habitual toe walking, including physical therapists, orthotists, pediatric orthopedists, and PM&R physicians. We believe that team education fosters more effective teamwork. The content covered in this program spans a range of topics related to foot function and development; postural control acquisition and influence on foot development; gait development and gait pathology related to foot pathomechanics; physiologic adaptation of lower limb muscle to routine use - both ideal and pathologic; and the contribution of postural control deficits to equinus deformity development. A review of musculoskeletal assessment procedures prepares participants for training in lab sessions. The assessment findings serve as outcome data and lead to a systematic clinical decision-making process regarding optimizing orthotic design. Billi applies these sciences to a review of strategies for optimizing body weight loading on - and somatosensory input from - the feet, using customized and specialized cast boots and orthoses. Lab sessions feature supervised trials of several ankle and foot assessment procedures with findings applied to the fabrication and biomechanical optimization of two types of below-knee cast and of the participant's own shoes. The two types of casts offer various influences on foot joint alignment, standing balance and the gait cycle while participants make casts with the client positioned in prone and sitting positions. Both casts are made to be removed without a motorized cutter, even when reinforced with fiberglass cast tape. Participants receive printed manuals, a flexible skeletal foot model and a five-piece assessments tool kit. BONUS: Tutorial attendees are invited to attend an optional lab after hours to seek certification as a TheraTogs Fitter - Level I at no additional cost. CEU'S: Course completion accumulates total of 43 contact hours: 21.3 didactic and 21.7 lab. Our application for Physical Therapist CEUs is in process via Redefine Health Education. For a list of states that accept these CEUs and information about obtaining them in those that do not, please see https://www.redefinehealthed.com/whereweareapproved.