Foot drop: Causes, Symptoms & Treatment of Toe Walking
Foot deformities (www.pohlig.net/en/foot-deform...) are our absolute specialty! 😎 We treat numerous children and adolescents with common, but also rare foot malpositions. They often walk - without realizing it - in a toe-off gait. This means that the normal rolling motion is missing and the heel hangs in the air when walking.
Treatment methods for a foot drop range from physical therapy to orthotics to surgery. We have been treating children and adolescents with pointed feet very successfully for decades with our lower leg orthoses (www.pohlig.net/en/lower-leg-o.... The orthoses prevent the feet from moving into the foot drop position, they stretch the muscles and improve the gait pattern.
Maxim wears orthotics for the first time in his life.
9-year-old Maxim has never worn an orthotic before. But because he has been walking almost 80% of the time on his toes, he needs lower leg orthoses to correct his pointed feet. Within a very short time, we measured Maxim's feet, scanned them, and made two individual orthoses for him on this basis.
If all goes well and Maxim wears his aids for 8 weeks, his pointed foot deformity will be history once and for all! 😎✌🏼
Symptoms and causes
Foot drop (drop foot, pes equinus) is a foot deformity that makes it very difficult for the heel to come into contact with the ground. This causes the patients to walk on the tips of their toes. Many people with pes equinus cannot manage to place their entire foot on the ground and therefore struggle with using their feet properly for walking. In many cases, the Achilles tendon is also shortened, which can affect the functioning of the entire leg.
Pes equinus appears either by itself or in combination with other foot deformities (club foot, pes cavus (high arch), flat valgus foot etc.).
Distinctions are generally made between neurological or syndromic non-neurological causes.
Neurological or syndromic causes include:
• Infantile cerebral palsy (the most common here is spastic pes equinus)
• Hereditary Motor-Sensitive Neuropathy (HMSN), also called Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (CMT)
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Chronic Stroke
• Trauma
Non-neurological causes include:
• Idiopathic toe walking (occurs without any predisposing spasticity; often a habit)
• Compensatory toe walking (ex., to compensate for leg length differences)
*All info about foot drop you can find here:*.
🌎 www.pohlig.net/en/foot-drop
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