Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment. In this article, Dr. J. Michael Bennett talks with Dr. Mark Vann about treatments for children congenital orthopedic problems. Dr. Bennett specializes in treating issues of the shoulders, elbows, knees, and some hand and wrist injuries from his clinics in Sugar Land near First Colony Mall and in Houston, near the Houston Galleria. His serves patients from all over Houston and Texas.
This is a transcript of a Dr. Jay Show broadcast on 1560TheGame in Houston, TX. Dr. J. Michael Bennett is a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon and a Fellowship Trained Sports Medicine Physician. Call 281-633-8600 for an appointment. Our special guest is Dr. Mark Vann, a Board Certified Orthopedic Surgeon specializing in foot and ankle injuries.
Here’s the transcript of the ninth portion of the Show:
DR J. MICHAEL BENNETT: Welcome back, this is Saturdays with Dr. Jay. Thanks for tuning in. We have a caller here. This is Jeff. Jeff, what can we do for you this morning?
CALLER: Hey Dr. Jay, thanks for having me on. I have a two-year-old daughter that has some genetic issues that affect her muscles and her ligaments. And one of her main issues is the ligaments in her ankles are real loose and it causes her to have to wear braces. Are there any treatments or procedures somewhere down the road that will help her out?
DR. J. MICHAEL BENNETT: I’ll go ahead and defer that to Dr. Vann over here.
DR. MARK VANN: Absolutely. Bracing is the goal initially. Down the road as she grows and her skeleton matures and her growth plates close, what we typically do is we assess the actual position of her ankle relative to her foot. These are the types of things we like to reserve until people are skeletally mature, meaning that their growth plates have closed. And the reason for that is that occasionally, depending on the residual deformity due to those ligaments, we sometimes have to do what we call osteotomies, and these are surgical procedures that sometimes involve actually making cuts in the bone. With those cuts we sometimes have to tighten ligaments and reroute tendons. It gets pretty complicated and technical but typically most kids do pretty well with the bracing initially.
DR. BENNETT: Just to add to that, I do some work over at Shriner’s Hospital downtown and a lot of the things we see over there really depends on the congenital abnormality that you’re talking about. Sometimes you can have joints that are too rigid, which is something called arthrogryposis, and we see this in really young children and sometimes they try to brace or splint those children initially and then later on, like Dr. Vann mentioned, there are some surgical procedures that can be done. Some of the time it’s a tendon transfer, too, which is where we take a tendon that is over-spastic or overacting in one area and swing it out around to the other area to counteract that rigidity in that joint to kind of balance it all out; it gives them actually a stable platform to walk on. Sometimes you can have a problem where the joints are too lax or too loose, and like Dr. Vann had mentioned as well, bracing is a big part of that and you typically wait until they are skeletally mature to do anything operatively. Strengthening can be a big help regarding that. And it also depends on how flaccid or loose the joints are and what their muscle tone is around those joints whether or not you’ll be able to get some strength in those muscles or not. When it comes down to congenital issues, it really does depend on the type of issue that you have and what the actual diagnosis is. Did that help you at all, Jeff?
CALLER: Yeah, and I appreciate it and we’re just looking for answers and we don’t really have many right now. Just trying to give her the best chance to develop like she’s supposed to.
DR. BENNETT: Thank you for that call, Jeff, it’s a great question and there are a lot of parents out there that are dealing with this, too, and we see that at Shriner’s Hospital which is an excellent facility as well. They do great work there for pediatric orthopedics and one thing that we see is something called cerebral palsy, where the brain is injured at a very young age, and the muscles either don’t fully develop or they’re over-spastic and it creates an imbalance. So that’s another area and those docs over there are doing incredible work regarding that.
If you’d like to discuss an orthopedics or sports medicine issue with Dr. Bennett, please call our office at 281-633-8600.
