A Colorado family is connecting their community and raising awareness about clubfoot, a birth defect where a baby’s foot is turned inward and down, after their son was born with the condition.
One in 1,000 children are born with clubfoot. If left untreated, it can lead to pain and problems walking, but modern treatments can help kids live full and active lives.
Sounds of little feet fill the Franktown home of 3-year-old Cameron Malone. You wouldn’t know it from looking at them, but the toddler’s feet looked very different when he was born.
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“A clubfoot is where the foot is turned in, kind of like a field hockey stick, I think of it. And their toe is down like this,” said Dr. Margaret Siobhan Murphy-Zane, pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Colorado South Campus in Highlands Ranch.
Dr. Murphy-Zane began treating Cameron before he was even born, when a 20-week scan diagnosed him with bilateral clubfoot.
“Neither of us were really surprised, but it still was a little bit of a shock. We left there. I cried a lot, and then I called my parents, and he called his mom, and they were like, it’s gonna be fine,” said Cameron’s mom.
His parents, Samantha Criswell and Jeremy Malone, were born with the condition, too.
“I had bilateral clubfeet. I did my treatments at Children’s Hospital Colorado downtown campus when I was younger. A lot of it was more experimental. It was done a lot differently than it is now. But yeah, I had casts and a surgery, and ended up fine,” Criswell said. “Then there was like a contraption in my bed that would spin my feet around all night long, while I slept.”
“I had just one. My left foot. I don’t have as much range of motion as he does, and my toes don’t wiggle as good as his do,” said Malone.
Dr. Murphy-Zane says the treatment used for clubfoot today is a little different.
“In the Ponseti method, we’re doing a series of casts where we rotate the foot out and then dorsiflex the foot into a better position. Years ago, when I first started training, we did a lot more surgery with clubfoot than we do now,” Dr. Murphy-Zane said.
Samantha Criswell
She put Cameron in his first cast at just 15 days old.
“This is an example of what the cast looks like. It’s made of a special kind of fast-drying plaster. It goes from their toes up to the top of their thigh,” Dr. Murphy-Zane said, while demonstrating how the casting process works.
“We went in once a week, every Tuesday, to the clubfoot clinic at the Children’s Hospital Highlands Ranch campus, and they soaked off his casts. The doctors evaluated him, took his measurements, and then recast him, so it essentially moved his feet from a curled-in position to a pointed-out position in seven weeks,” Criswell said.
At 8 weeks, he had a minor surgery called a tenotomy, then wore a special brace for three months.
“We do it here in clinic under a local anesthesia, and basically, we release the Achilles tendon here. It grows back really consistently for the baby, but it allows us to get that heel all the way down on the floor where we want it,” Dr. Murphy-Zane said.
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Criswell documented Cameron’s journey on social media.
“There’s 554 comments on here, and most of it are how people had clubfoot too. ‘My son had the same thing.’ ‘I had it.’ ‘My brother.’ ‘My daughter,'” Criswell said. “It was a really good kind of platform to help other parents and let them see that, with the right treatment, kids can thrive, and that it doesn’t need to be some big, scary diagnosis.”
“I think that’s terrific. When I heard that she had been doing that,” Dr. Murphy-Zane said. “It’s really helpful to have positive stories out there.”
Cameron still wears a brace when he sleeps. But his little feet can now run, jump, and dance, like any other kid.
“It’s normalized for him. It’s always been his way of life. You know, he doesn’t know going to sleep without boots and bars,” said Malone.
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“He just runs and plays and jumps and never stops moving. He’s just your very average 3-year-old,” Criswell said. “If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. You never want to hear that anything is wrong with your kid, but seeing him thrive now, it made all the treatment worth it.”
Clubfoot can be diagnosed in utero at the 20-week scan. Dr. Murphy-Zane recommends parents come to her for prenatal visits, or as early as they can.
“It’s so nice to just let the parents have some peace and quiet for a couple of weeks before they have the baby, where they know that they have a plan,” Dr. Murphy-Zane said.
For best results, she likes to have babies in their first casts when they are between 2 and 6 weeks old, but Dr. Murphy-Zane says she’ll treat children anywhere in the process.
You can learn more about clubfoot here.
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