With spring finally here, amateurs and professionals alike have returned to the baseball diamond. More than 40 million Americans participate in baseball and softball each year. According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), there are over 500,000 injuries per year related to baseball.
American children begin playing organized baseball at 5 or 6 and some people continue to play the sport past the age of 60 whether games are competitive or during a family picnic. As a result of this, different injury patterns present themselves. Most of us who have played can

Orthotics are an integral part of podiatric practice. They provide viable treatment options for many conditions that we treat. However, there are also associated hard costs with orthotics that can be a financial detriment to the practice if the office cannot collect fees in a timely fashion.
Obviously, your staff should be very aware of coverage criteria for the principal insurance companies that your office commonly deals with when it comes to payment for any service rendered in the office. This will save a lot of time in determining whether orthotics may be a covered benefit f

Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a significant risk factor for diabetic foot amputation. It is also an important marker for atherosclerosis in other organ systems and is associated with a fourfold increase in cardiovascular death.¹
Current estimates suggest a 3 to 10 percent incidence of PAD in the general population but reportedly only 25 to 33 percent of these people are symptomatic. Of the patients with asymptomatic PAD, 70 to 80 percent will remain stable at five years whereas 10 to 20 percent will experience significant deterioration of their health due to t

I am in the last nine months of my 33-year career as a podiatrist. Every day of patient care is a cause for reflection. I know what I will miss and what I will not miss.
I will not miss my most creative patients, those who are pursuing settlement of personal injury claims. Some have been legitimate but many have been pure fiction.
My most memorable creative patient was a young man who lost his second toe in an industrial accident. He got his foot caught in a chain and sprocket, and lost the toe. I cleaned up the mess and he healed without problems. I received a request for his r

Patients commonly present with ingrown toenails and treatments range from chemical matrixectomy to the newer orthonyxia procedure. A new study in the Journal of the American College of Surgery concludes that orthonyxia, using a metal brace for the toe, is superior to partial matrix excision in terms of recovery and patient satisfaction.
Researchers randomized 105 consecutive patients with 109 toenails, excluding patients with diabetes and/or paronychias. Fifty-eight patients underwent partial matrix excision, which included 5 to 10 mL of lidocaine 1%, according to th