ROM Resist & New Zealand

If you read the SACH / SAWCH book, then you would think that no matter how bad a foot is, structurally, we should be OK. Worst case, take a meat cleaver – WHACK – and on goes a nice shiny new prosthesis! That is something that is guaranteed to work! You don't need feet. You need what behaves as feet.

Once upon a time (these images from the 1920's) we had no way to FIX club feet. Aside from the many skin break down problems, the cosmetics were awful and severely shunned by women in particular. This was the humane remedy. She

didn't want feet. She wanted to mingle. She wanted what looked and acted like feet. This is a repeating theme in medicine, do something, anything that feels better, at least until a real fix comes along.

A congenital club foot is born clubbed and is a mechanical problem. But, not born that way, as a neurologically caused "club" foot (spastic or dystonic) is a neurofunctional imbalance problem that becomes clubbed. You would expect treatments to differ. They do, conceptually. But we look at a kid crouched & legs medially rotated, chugging, across the room (family cheering) and the question is do we get the butcher's cleaver to try