By Larry Huppin, DPM on
9/2/2010 1:53 PM
 I found a great blog focused on helping women find exceptionally fashionable shoes that are still good for the feet. The blog happens to be written by a friend of mine and a ProLab client. She is a podiatrist in Portland, OR and loves shoes. Her blog has become my go-to resourse when women want to find extremely attractive shoes that still offer some protection for painful feet.
Here is her introduction to the blog:
This is a place where I can feature shoes that are amazingly adorable, stylish and yet feel quite comfortable. Do all of these shoes work for everyone? No. Can you walk in all of them on vacation without pain? No. ...
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By Cherri Choate, DPM on
9/1/2010
If you are new to an orthotic lab, or new in practice and prescribing othotics, getting guidance directly from the lab in important. Every orthotic lab has unique prescription forms, production processes and materials. In order to improve your orthotic fabrication success, it would be helpful to dedicate some extra time to your first few prescriptions.
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By Larry Huppin, DPM on
8/30/2010 6:55 AM
I’m sitting on a plane now returning from the ACFAOM meeting in Orlando where Drs. Paul Scherer, Mark Reeves, Doug Richie, Richard Stess, Mr. Jeff Root and myself presented a track on evidence based orthotic therapy. We hear again and again that attending one of these orthotic therapy tracks is a practice changing event for many practitioners who are still practicing orthotic therapy as it was taught to them in school 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Extensive research on the use of foot orthoses has changed dramatically the way orthotic therapy should be practiced and if you haven’t attended an evidence based orthotic therapy seminar in the last few years, make a point to do so. Upcoming seminars can be found here. For those of you in the northeast, nearly two full days of lecture and workshop will be presented at the New York Clinical Confere ...
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By Larry Huppin, DPM on
8/26/2010 4:10 PM
Rocker sole shoes have become very popular in the past few years. Often marketed as “toning shoes”, there really is no evidence that they offer any exercise or fitness benefit over regular shoes. Rocker soles, however, have been shown in a number of studies to be an effective treatment modality for foot conditions including metatarsalgia, forefoot ulcers, midfoot arthritis, ankle arthritis, hallux rigidus and heel pain.
The best known brands of the rocker shoes are MBT and Sketcher Shape-ups. They are not however, in our opinion, the best of the rocker soles. The problem with the MBTs and Sketchers is that they have extremely soft and unstable soles under the heel. This makes them unstable in the frontal plane. The manufacturers claim that this lack of stability increases the “toning” function of the shoe, but have no evidence to support this claim.
Instead, if you are going to prescribe rocker shoes for your patients we reco ...
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By Cherri Choate, DPM on
8/25/2010
 Optimizing the shoe/orthotic relationship for patient treatment is imperative. With the growing technological components in the footwear industry, there are options available today that can be very beneficial to patient care.
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By Larry Huppin, DPM on
8/22/2010 3:00 PM
For the past several weeks I have been testing a new scanner in my office. So far I am impressed with the functionality of the scanner. It’s not perfect, but the manufacturer has been very receptive to our suggestions.
Scanning – also known as digital casting – soon will likely be the most common method of capturing an image of the foot to produce custom foot orthoses.
We have evaluated over a dozen scanners and I have personally tested five of the better ones. Over the next several months we will be providing unbiased reviews of these and other scanners to help you decide whether you wish to use a scanner in your office, and if so, find the best one to serve your needs.
The first thing we did was to come up with the criteria any scanner must fulfill to be considered as a replacement for casting. We came up with the following 9 criteria that the ideal 3D optical scanner should have:
1. < ...
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By Cherri Choate, DPM on
8/18/2010
Arch pads are a simple modification that can be useful for certain patients.
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By Cherri Choate, DPM on
8/11/2010
 The use of metatarsal pads on orthotics has been standard practice for many years. Infact, metatarsal pads are likley used as primary treatment alone, more frequently than they are as modifications to orthotics. In order to improve patient symptoms, there are a few details to consider that may increase success when using metatarsal pads as part of orthotic therapy.
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By Cherri Choate, DPM on
8/4/2010
 When converting a functional orthotic prescription to a dress orthotic prescription a few items should be kept in mind. This blog will discuss the orthotic variables to consider in this situation to improve fit in dress shoes.
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By Larry Huppin, DPM on
7/28/2010 1:32 PM
When you prescribe a custom foot orthosis, do you always know what you are getting from your lab?
Not long ago it was clear that if you ordered a custom orthosis you were getting a truly custom orthosis. You sent in a plaster cast and the lab made a plaster positive cast, modified it as prescribed and then heat molded a material to create an orthosis on top of that cast. The resulting orthosis was clearly custom made for a specific patient.
Orthotic fabrication has changed dramatically over the past two decades. More likely than not, a plaster positive will no longer be produced when you send a negative cast to your orthotic lab. Instead, the corrections that were previously performed to create a plaster positive are now done on a CAD / CAM computer system. The same corrections can be performed on the computer as were done in plaster and then a positive cast can be milled on which the orthosis is produced; or the orthosis can be milled directly. This tec ...
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