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Foot of the Week – Episode 4 – AFO Solutions

In this week’s episode, we cover the Cuboid Lock “custom AFO” for Lateral Instability. This is a “custom ankle brace” to prevent the typical lateral rollover or ankle sprain.

Video Transcript: 

Welcome back to Insightful Products where we help people walk.

Today, we’re going to talk about a cuboid lock, LI. LI designs are for lateral instability. The brace will protect the patient from an instability like this, where the rotation of the tibia creates a lateral instability.

Here, we have a right foot that needs a lateral instability brace, and the cuboid lock design is being utilized. In this particular case, this practitioner wanted the lateral malleolar window, because the lateral malleolus is very prominent, and they thought the extra support and ERD-pad that we will use will help ensure the correction that the patient needs.

When we design these braces, we try to encourage a forefoot abduction, and so we make sure we have plenty of material on the lateral side, and we cheat a little bit on the medial side. So, what will happen here is when this brace goes into the shoe, the shoe will coax over the forefoot into an abducted position.

The placement of the I-strap is critical, and what will happen is when we set this in place, it’ll come in and tighten up right over the cuboid here. Of course, it’ll be on the inside of the brace. We’ll put the joint up above the lateral malleolus, and then the medial side will be in the correct anatomical position. You can see also that when we take the medial arch out a little bit, we’re promoting a little bit of pronation. And of course, that’s what we want to do on an LI case, because here we have a foot that’s twisting too much, like you twist your ankle.

The lateral instability condition: the tibia rotates externally and creates an accentuated or high arch. And you can see how the tendency is to go too far and twist the ankle. And this is what we’re protecting for. So, the lateral malleolar window will go right over what ends up being the distal end of the fibula.

 And here we have the final product: this is the cuboid lock LI with lateral malleolar window. And you can see here how the malleolus will be cushioned, the apex will be cushioned, and the window will be going around it. This I-strap here will come right over the cuboid and lock it down.

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