Club foot management

Key words: Congenital club foot, Classification, Conservative management

Club foot (also called talipes equinovarus) is the commonest foot congenital malformation. It affects 1-2/1,000 of live births, showing a ratio M:F of 2:1 and a predominant distribution in the developing countries (80%). It is a complex and bilateral deformity in 50% of cases. Affected children will not walk physiologically and live a normal life without a proper treatment. Over the last decades corrective solutions with different degrees of invasiveness have been proposed. In particular, the surgical treatment of club foot may lead to complications and to the final result of a foot that hardly has a complete functionality also because of retractions and surgical scars. In the last decades scientific evidence has definitively confirmed the effectiveness of the Ponseti non-invasive method based on manipulation, plaster casts, percutaneous Achilles tenotomy and stabilisation of the foot using a brace.