16 Jun Is your Little One 🧒with Cerebral Palsy walking on their toes Been told that your Little One 👧needs Botox injections to help them get their heels 🦵down onto the ground Wondering if there is an alternative option to Botox Injections 💉for your Little One that could help get their heels 🦶down onto the ground

Children with Cerebral Palsy 👧often end up walking on their toes because of increased tone in their calf muscles called spasticity. Traditionally, Children’s Hospitals would recommend Botox Injections 💉to help reduce the spasticity in the calf muscles so that a child with Cerebral Palsy is able to get their heels down onto the ground to walk properly. After Botox Injections, the child will immediately undergo Serial Casting for several weeks to help stretch the calf muscles. Once serial casting is done, the child is placed into rigid Ankle-Foot Orthosis (AFO) to keep their ankles at 90 degrees range. This tends to cause a child to lift their legs up to stomp as they walk 🦵because AFOs do not allow a child to bend their ankles forward more than 90 degrees to walk heel-toe, heel-toe. Studies have now shown that Botox is a denervating agent, which permanently kills the nerve receptors in muscles and replace muscle tissue with inelastic scar tissue. Over time, Botox will cause the muscles to be weaker. 😳

Here at My Favourite Physio, 🤓we want to avoid long term damage to the muscles, therefore, we use Radial Shockwave Therapy to help reduce Spasticity in the muscles of Children with Cerebral Palsy instead of Botox Injections. We do carry out Serial Casting to stretch calf muscles when the child has a growth spurt and calf muscles become too tight. Instead of AFOs, we recommend a combination of customised insole orthotics and Dictus Bands to allow Little Ones to learn to walk with heel strike, foot flat and push off their toes.

So if you have child 👧with Cerebral Palsy and you would like to try an alternative method of helping your child correct their foot posture when walking🙅‍♀️without using Botox Injections, ring My Favourite Physio 📱on (02) 9790 4233 or DM us @myfavouritephysio to speak to one of our Expert Paediatric Physiotherapists🤓 today.