- Information from the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery

[Guest guest]

> Now the dilemma.. . Our previous surgeon said this Thursday that the

> main problem with the Ponseti method, and why it hasn't spread

around

> the world in the past 40 or so years, is that the manipulation

treatment

> so specialised, the only person who really does it properly is

Ponseti

> himself.

,

What your doctor has said is similar to the view of many doctors

about the Ponseti method prior to Dr. Ponseti's 1996 book being

published and that is only changing in the last few years. Many

apparently felt that since the Ponseti method had only really been

used at Iowa, that it really couldn't be a valid method, or else

everyone else would have already been using it. I think that it was

kind of a scepticism that since the accepted medical dogma since the

1950's was that " real " clubfeet had to have surgery so how could Dr.

Ponseti be treating real clubfeet. Most apparently felt that

treating " real " clubfoot without surgery was impossible so there has

to be some other explanation for the studies out of the U of Iowa.

You can see a bit of that perception in a response to a letter to the

editor of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery in the October 1996

issue. A message on that article can be seen at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nosurgery4clubfoot/message/7654

and (3-17-99)