A Systematic Review of Digital Deformities in Pediatric Patients and Their Podiatric Treatments

Digital deformities in pediatrics are one of the reasons why parents go to podiatry clinics with their children. There is a great diversity of digital alterations in the feet; the origin of the vast majority is genetic. Due to this diversity, different treatments are offered depending on deformity and age, ranging from monitoring progress and changing footwear to deformities that are directly evaluated for surgery. The main objective of this study is to describe and identify the different podiatric digital deformities present in pediatric patients, as well as the most commonly used treatments depending on the deformity.

This study is a bibliographic review that has been carried out after using different search equations and applying a series of inclusion and exclusion criteria, obtaining a total of 10 articles (N = 10).

A total of 50% of the studies belong to samples where the authors affirm that surgical treatment is the most appropriate in deformities such as polydactyly and macrodactyly, treated in the first months of life. Half of the studies reviewed were clinical studies with a sample, and the other half were bibliographic reviews.

Clinodactyly, syndactyly, and macrodactyly are the most frequent deformities, with the first, second, and third toes being the most affected.