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Posted on October 13, 2012 by

I’ve been a bit stressed lately because I can’t get my desktop to work like it did three months ago, before the hard drive crashed and I got it replaced. In any case, I’ll keep moving forward with my laptop and hope that this gets resolved soon, among other reasons because, at this rate, I’ll end up on payroll at the Apple Store in Xanadú, in the outskirts of Madrid.

Every day, more and more patients with neurological issues are coming to our institute. They suffer from the consequences of Spina bifida, polio, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease,among others. I was looking through an article from a foot-and-ankle medical magazine that talked about cavovarus foot as a result of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. This magazine has only been around for a few years, and I was surprised to read that, according to this author, an orthopaedic surgeon at the University of Utah, tendon transfers weren’t effective. This is why I have decided to write this post about how applying innovative Neuro-Orthopaedia techniques allows us to give patients who suffer from this disease a good quality of life.

Angelica, as we’ll call her, has suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth diseasesince she was a child. She had an operation on her left foot years ago; however, it wasn’t effective as the doctors only fixed the bones, forgetting about the muscles. Her right foot was just as deformed, but they didn’t even touch it. Four months ago, we operated on her and reconstructed her foot, using tendon transfers, but most importantly putting the posterior tibial tendon toward the back of the foot. Then we joined together only the Chopart joint, leaving all other joints untouched, and finally we repaired her toes, which were previously claw toes.

Take a look at the images and the pre- and post-operative videos, and you will see that there is a radical change in the shape and functioning of the foot, especially when I ask the patient to flex her foot against my hand pushing down on it; In this moment we can see that the foot really works, and will allow the patient to walk normally again.

In the end, I just can’t understand why some professionals who in talks and in writing continue to insist that tendon transfers don’t work on patients suffering from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

Until next post.