Open AccessTime to revise our dialogue : how flat is the paediatric flatfoot ?
Author(s) -
Morrison Stewart C.,
McClymont Juliet,
Price Carina,
Nester Chris
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of foot and ankle research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.763
H-Index - 39
ISSN - 1757-1146
DOI - 10.1186/s13047-017-0233-2
Subject(s) - foot (prosody) , medicine , arch , perspective (graphical) , work (physics) , clinical practice , position (finance) , physical medicine and rehabilitation , physical therapy , artificial intelligence , geography , computer science , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , finance , engineering , economics
A recent systematic review of measures of foot development used the medial longitudinal arch profile as its primary indicator of development. A comparative analysis of existing studies was undertaken. This work confirmed changes with arch profile were age‐dependent, although the age at which foot development ceased remains unknown. This work also highlighted the abundance of clinical measures used in existing research and outlined the challenges with drawing consensus from available data. There is a clear need to move this debate forward and, to do so, it is essential that scientific and clinical communities unite. It is time to abandon ill‐defined measures of foot position, look beyond the medial longitudinal arch as a sole parameter of foot development and re‐focus our perspective(s) on the paediatric foot in order to make advances with clinical practice and research.