Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps

Taking it to the next level!

Global Podiatry and lower limb related courses and seminars

Archives for Injury

The Bauer Bump

The ‘Bauer Bump’ was a new word I only recently heard about and wrote here about it. The Bauer Bump is a haglund’s deformity that becomes painful in ice skates and Bauer are one of the most well known brands of ice skate, hence the term Bauer Bump. I had been well aware of the issue of Haglund’s deformity and that it was a problem in the rigid ice skate and had treated a number over the years (and I grew up going ice skating a lot!), I had just not come across the term, Bauer’s Bump.

After learning of the term, I did a bit of a deep dive into the ice skating and ice hockey lay literature, websites and social media to see just how commonly it was called this. It was commonly called that and there were a lot of questions on ice skating forums and social media sites from ice skater about it.

I was also impressed at the depth and extent of knowledge about the condition in the ice skate industry and what could be done to treat it. They certainly appeared to be doing a better job of looking after it than I was!! The ice skate experts have at their disposal tools that can be used to modify the shell of the skate to get pressure of the lump of the Haglund’s deformity. They are very valuable people because of that. If you have a patient with a Bauer’s bump, reach out to these skate fitters.

Fluoroquinolone induced tendinopathy

Fluoroquinolones are antibiotics that are commonly used to treat a variety of illnesses such as respiratory and urinary tract infections, with ciprofloxacin and delafloxacin being the most common. However, there is the issue that fluoroquinolones increase the risk for tendinopathy. This means it is important that the drug history of anyone with a tendon issue is evaluated.

Fortunately this risk only appears to be associated with the first and second generation fluoroquinolones with the third and fourth generation drugs not being associated with an increased risk of tendinopathy.

Severs Disease / Calcaneal Apophysitis

This is a common topic I write about often. I wrote here about just how much I learnt about the condition when my own daughter got it and just how much that subsequently influenced my management. We did a PodChatLive on it with Alicia James and I published my unscientific study on it here.

Firstly, it should be called Calcaneal apophysitis and not Sever’s disease, but I still use Sever’s disease as that is way more common in the search engines when you want your writing to show up.

Secondly, as I said in my unscientific study, I not sure we can do much to help it. The big problem with Sever’s disease is that if you take 100 kids with and do nothing, x% will be a lot better next week. If you took another 100 and did something, then x% would be better next week, so did ‘something’ work or was it the natural history that was the reason for the improvement.

I know when you visit Podiatry Facebook groups and other social media and see discussions on Sever’s disease, so many have there views on what should be done. I have to fight myself really hard not to get involved in arguments, but I often want to ask them how do they know the treatment that they are advocating actually works and that the improvement that they are seeing is not just the natural history that you would expect to see. They actually have no way of knowing unless what they are advocating has been tested in a proper well controlled prospective randomized study.

So what do I do for Sever’s disease. Not a lot. Educate them on the nature of the condition and the natural history; discuss how to manage the loads and use a cushioned heel pad.

Gait retraining for anterior compartment syndrome in runners

One big thing I get from running the Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps is the feedback that I get when clinicians change their clinical practice based on what I teach on the course and its works!

One of these is the treatment of anterior compartment syndrome. My previous clinical experience in dealing with this problem is an almost 100% failure in its treatment. It really was a challenge. Anterior compartment syndrome is when the muscles expands its volume as it normally does on exercise and the fascial compartment that the muscle is in is particularly tight, so it hurts. Nothing really used to seem to help except the surgical outcomes were always pretty good.

In 2013, this study was published and I immediately started doing it in clinical practice and teaching about it in the Clinical Biomechanics Boot Camps. By changing from a heel strike to a more midfoot or forefoot strike with a lower touch down angle meant the activity in the anterior tibial muscle did not have to work so hard (but keep in mind that to do this requires other muscles to work harder and put them at increased injury risk if this is not done carefully).

This means the rationale was there. Even more surprisingly was that the results were often quite dramatic clinically. It worked. I enjoyed the feedback from course participants who went back to their clinics and tried it and contacted me to tell me it worked.

Videos of Achilles tendon ruptures

It may be somewhat voyeuristic, but I periodically head over to YouTube to check out if there are any new videos of athletes getting an Achilles tendon rupture. They hurt you to watch them. Here are a few:

For more on the Kevin Durant rupture, see this write up. One thing I do find interesting about Achilles tendon ruptures is that if you follow the literature, the outcomes between surgical outcome versus conservative care outcomes are about the same; so how does clinician make a decision as to which is the best approach? There is this very log thread on Podiatry Arena with all that literature (you can sign up to watch that thread and get notified of new updates). Some research can be followed here.

The mechanism of action in all these videos is similar. There is a simultaneous extension of the knee and flexion of the ankle as they accelerate.