Re: Osteotomy and Dr. questions

[Guest guest]

Hi Barbara and welcome! Congrats on your little girl! I have no experience with

an osteotomy for a 3 year old, but I would STRONGLY recommend you see Dr.

Ponseti. Especially since he is so close. I have limited experience with him

myself, as I live in Florida, but people travel from all over the world to see

him. I'm sure he'll be able to help your little girl. I have never heard of the

other dr. you mentioned. And if $$ is an issue, Dr. Ponseti will work with you

on payment. There are others on the list with more experience in that

department. Good luck to you both!

Marcia

Osteotomy and Dr. questions

We are adopting a 3 year old girl who was born with bilateral

clubfoot. She had a heel cord tenotomy when she was 3 months old.

She has had corrective casting and bracing. She started walking at

19 months. She has had very little treatment for the past 6 months

or more. She has been resistant to physical therapy, but I don't

think that she has been in a situation for consistent care in that

regard.

She was recently seen by an orthopedic. Apparently, her feet are

starting to turn inward again. The orthopedic said that an

osteotomy might be necessary. I don't know if that is the exact

surgery. Does anyone have any thoughts on that recommendation? Are

there other things that we could try before that surgery?

We plan to bring her home at the beginning of April and will have

her seen by a specialist as soon as possible. We live about 2.5

hours from Dr. Ponseti, but Dr. R. is about 3 hours

away in Springfield, IL. More importantly, Dr. is a

provider with our insurance. Does anyone have any experience with

Dr. ?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Barbara

[Guest guest]

Congratulations on the new baby! Just quickly here - it's a no brainer in my

opinion to see Dr. Ponseti FIRST. Get his opinion and/or treatment prior to any

thing else. Best of luck.

s.

Osteotomy and Dr. questions

We are adopting a 3 year old girl who was born with bilateral

clubfoot. She had a heel cord tenotomy when she was 3 months old.

She has had corrective casting and bracing. She started walking at

19 months. She has had very little treatment for the past 6 months

or more. She has been resistant to physical therapy, but I don't

think that she has been in a situation for consistent care in that

regard.

She was recently seen by an orthopedic. Apparently, her feet are

starting to turn inward again. The orthopedic said that an

osteotomy might be necessary. I don't know if that is the exact

surgery. Does anyone have any thoughts on that recommendation? Are

there other things that we could try before that surgery?

We plan to bring her home at the beginning of April and will have

her seen by a specialist as soon as possible. We live about 2.5

hours from Dr. Ponseti, but Dr. R. is about 3 hours

away in Springfield, IL. More importantly, Dr. is a

provider with our insurance. Does anyone have any experience with

Dr. ?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Barbara

[Guest guest]

As others have said, please consider going to Dr. Ponseti, at least

for a consult, and then make your decision as to treatment and

doctors. No one has experience with older children like he has,

which gives you a tremendous opportunity to get information about

your particular situation. I really think you will find your

daughter needs less invasive work than what you have heard.

We lived about 3.5 hours away from IA City and even though there was

a doctor in our town who had recently studied w/Dr. Ponseti, we took

our newly adopted son to Dr. Ponseti. He was only 6 mos. old, but

there were enough unknowns regarding his birth family, that we

wanted as much experience as possible in our doctor, to catch any

little signs that might be important. Our insurance even agreed,

and very quickly (after we got to the proper person which was a

struggle argggh) agreed to cover at in-network rates. They even

backdated approval to cover the first two visits which happened

before the approval went through.

Congratulations on your expanding family! Our son is turning three

next month; what a great age, although I think at the end of the

day, I'm ready to go to bed before he is! Please look at the links

for this site for information as to the proper protocol for the

Ponseti Method, so that you can have some idea of how your

daughter's treatment lines up with that.

All the best, I hope the rest of the process goes smoothly for you!

Caroline

>

> We are adopting a 3 year old girl who was born with bilateral

> clubfoot. She had a heel cord tenotomy when she was 3 months

old.

> She has had corrective casting and bracing. She started walking

at

> 19 months. She has had very little treatment for the past 6

months

> or more. She has been resistant to physical therapy, but I don't

> think that she has been in a situation for consistent care in that

> regard.

>

> She was recently seen by an orthopedic. Apparently, her feet are

> starting to turn inward again. The orthopedic said that an

> osteotomy might be necessary. I don't know if that is the exact

> surgery. Does anyone have any thoughts on that recommendation?

Are

> there other things that we could try before that surgery?

>

> We plan to bring her home at the beginning of April and will have

> her seen by a specialist as soon as possible. We live about 2.5

> hours from Dr. Ponseti, but Dr. R. is about 3 hours

> away in Springfield, IL. More importantly, Dr. is a

> provider with our insurance. Does anyone have any experience with

> Dr. ?

>

> Thanks in advance for your help!

> Barbara

>

[Guest guest]

Hi, Barbara!

Congratulations on your pending arrival! What a lucky little

girl!

I, too, would recommend that you start off with Dr. Ponseti. If

this is not possible financially, then I would suggest that you

drive a bit further south and see Dr. Dobbs at the St. Louis

Shriners where care would be free of charge. I would highly

recommend Dr. Dobbs over Dr. for treating an older child-

definitely worth the extra travel time/expense. Iowa or Dobbs are

definitely the best choices in this region for your daughter!

I would also suggest that you email Joyce ('s mom) and Anita

(Jude's mom) regarding their recent experiences in adopting older

children with clubfoot and having them treated w/ the Ponseti

method. You can see their stories and get their contact information

off this site: http://members.tripod.com/ponseti_links-ivil under

the section regarding older children.

I hope this helps! I'm in the Champaign, IL area so let me know if

there's anything that I can do to help you as I'm guessing you're

not too far from here!

Regards,

& (3-16-00, left cf)

http://ponseticlubfoot.freeservers.com/

[Guest guest]

Hi Barbara,

Welcome to the group and congrats on your new daughter!

I don't really have any advise about Dr. directly, but the

fact that he is not well known to us tells me that he doesn't have the

experience of Dr. Ponseti or Dr. Dobbs in treating clubfoot,

especially not with older children.

As and the others have said, I too would highly recommend you

make the trip to Iowa to see Dr. Ponseti. Since you mention the

insurance issue, you can also consider going to St. Louis to see Dr.

Dobbs. He works out of the Shriner's hospital where all care is free

for children up to age 18 - no insurance required. Dr. Dobbs trained

under Dr. Ponseti for about 7 years so he is quite experienced and has

in the past, I think it is 5-6 years now, taken off as one of the

leading clubfoot docs outside of Iowa. He also has the experience

with older children.

An osteotomy involves the cutting of bone, usually removing a piece of

the ankle bone and reinserting it in a different position. This is a

big deal surgery. There are a lot of steps that should be tried prior

to doing this type of surgery. The first, and of course least

invasive, is recasting. Both Dr. Ponseti and Dr. Dobbs have had much

success with recasting for relapses in older children - I would

definitely encourage you to contact one of them as a first step.

Ignatio Ponseti, MD

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

200 Hawkins Drive

010255 JPP

Iowa City, IA 52242

(319)356-3469

ignacio-ponseti@...

Dobbs, M.D.

Shriners Hospitals for Children

St. Louis Unit

2001 S. Lindbergh Blvd.

St. Louis, MO 63131-3597

Tel:

Fax:

dobbsmatthew@...

OR

St. Louis Children's Hospital

Suite 4s20

One Children's Place

St. Louis, MO 63110

mattdobbs@...

Hope this helps,

Mom to Jenna (4/7/01) & Sammy (9/25/04, RCF, Dobbs' brace, 14hrs/day)

>

> Hi, Barbara!

> Congratulations on your pending arrival! What a lucky little

> girl!

> I, too, would recommend that you start off with Dr. Ponseti. If

> this is not possible financially, then I would suggest that you

> drive a bit further south and see Dr. Dobbs at the St. Louis

> Shriners where care would be free of charge. I would highly

> recommend Dr. Dobbs over Dr. for treating an older child-

> definitely worth the extra travel time/expense. Iowa or Dobbs are

> definitely the best choices in this region for your daughter!

> I would also suggest that you email Joyce ('s mom) and Anita

> (Jude's mom) regarding their recent experiences in adopting older

> children with clubfoot and having them treated w/ the Ponseti

> method. You can see their stories and get their contact information

> off this site: http://members.tripod.com/ponseti_links-ivil under

> the section regarding older children.

> I hope this helps! I'm in the Champaign, IL area so let me know if

> there's anything that I can do to help you as I'm guessing you're

> not too far from here!

> Regards,

> & (3-16-00, left cf)

> http://ponseticlubfoot.freeservers.com/

>