Children's Feet/ Podopaediatrics

Podopaediatrics is the treatment of foot and walking/running related conditions in children. Children are not just “small adults” and conditions that arise can often be specific to children. Achilles Foot Clinic provides a full service of diagnoses and treatment of childrens conditions from verrucae’s to ingrown toenails and flat feet.

    Verrucae
    Ingrown toenails
    Diabetes
    Rheumatology conditions

Severs Disease (heel bone)
Oschgood Slatter’s disease(knee)
Perthes Hip.
These are conditions in children were the spaces, filled with cartilage, between two bones which are still growing are placed under stress and become inflamed and painful often with exercise. Podiatrists will treat these conditions by carrying out a thorough assessment of the childs gait and posture to determine why the locations are placed under stress and devise a treatment plan to eliminate this stress. This often involves footwear and exercise advice and provision of orthoses.

Childrens Flat feet, knock-knees, bow legs.
When a child is born its legs from the pelvis to the feet are rotated and twisted having been in the foetal position for nine months. Over the first nine years or so of a childs life these rotations mostly straighten out to “normal”. During these years the child will move away from flat feet and may be knock-kneed or bow legged as they straighten.

It can be perfectly ok for a child to be flat footed, or knock kneed or bow legged at certain ages. If you are worried that your child feet and legs are not developing as they should contact Achilles Foot Clinic where we can assess this and implement appropriate treatments.

Footwear
It is generally advised that parents should avoid giving a very young child shoes until the child is walking outside as the foot is very soft and still developing at this stage.

Children’s feet should be measured every time that they buy new shoes in a shoe shop that is capable of doing so properly. Be sure to replace worn shoes and watch for foot growth that may make current shoes too tight. More detailed advice on shoes may be found at the footwear section of this website or alternatively contact the clinic.