Foot of the Week – Episode 10 – AFO Solutions

In this week’s blog, we discuss our pediatric AFO, called the SMO. The SMO ankle brace or SMO orthotic, stands for Supramalleollar orthoses. This pediatric AFO is a soft AFO for children. The ankle orthosis allows both dorsiflexion and plantarflexion but provides the support kids require when pronation is a problem.

For questions, call us at 207-885-0414 or email us at sales@insightful-products.com.

Video Transcript: 

Hi, welcome to Foot of the Week. Ian here from Insightful Products and I wanted to talk to you about the SMO which stands for Supra Malleolar Orthosis. Here it is and it comes in pairs. This is the right side; it looks strange because we go very far on the lateral side to control that forefoot abduction. This is obviously a pediatric brace used for those who have a hypotonic, very pronated foot. To cast for them you want to make sure that you go far on the lateral side, so we get a good description of the lateral side we need to know where the medial malleolar are. You can see the brace has a distinctive ST pad right here that controls the pronation. And we pad both malleoli. It’s a very short brace. It’s flexible plastic and it’s not meant for kids or children over 89 or 90 pounds. It needs a lot of flexibility; kids are very active and this doesn’t restrict any plantar flexion movement. The goal of this brace is to stabilize the foot and to restore the severe pronation these kids have. That’s it for Foot of the Week. We’ll see you next week. I’m heading to the very Downeast part of Maine to the river where Maine meets Canada to do a little canoeing. See you next week.