Special technique helps fix James’s clubfoot
With help from the UW Health Kids pediatric orthopedic surgery team, James, 5, is nearing completion of treatment for his condition. He’s also the kind of kid who doesn’t let anything hold him back from playing sports and loving life.
“If you tell James he can’t do something, he will prove to you that he can,” says his mother, Heather Warpinski. “James taught himself how to swim when he was 3. He just didn’t like swimming lessons. He also played soccer last summer and is starting to get interested in football.”
The UW Health Kids pediatric orthopedic team treated James’ clubfoot with a widely accepted, essentially painless approach called the Ponseti Method, which involves five to eight weekly cast applications that gradually realign the tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, and bones in a child’s foot. Following the casting, the child wears a special set of boots and a brace until total correction is achieved.
.
.
Two UW Health physicians learned casting method from Dr. Ponseti
Few pediatric orthopedic teams throughout the nation can claim, as UW Health Kids can, that one or more of its doctors learned how to perform the Ponseti Method directly from its creator, the late Dr. Ignacio Ponseti.
Dr. Ken Noonan, a UW Health Kids orthopedic surgeon, trained with Dr. Ponseti in the early 1990s at the University of Iowa. Meanwhile, Dr. Blaise Nemeth, a UW Health Kids non-surgical orthopedic specialist, visited Dr. Ponseti on several instances to enhance his own mastery of the technique.
Before most orthopedic surgeons embraced the use of the Ponseti method, most children with clubfoot were treated with a more invasive surgery that essentially took the foot apart and put it back together – a procedure that frequently led to scarring and lifelong arthritis.
“Dr. Ponseti was essentially ignored by most orthopedic surgeons for decades,” Noonan says. “As word of the Ponseti Method began to spread online, families would come to Iowa City from all over the world to have their kids treated. Over the last 25 to 30 years, the Ponseti Method thankfully emerged as the standard form of treatment. Today, our entire team is trained [on] how to perform the Ponseti Method.”
About one in four children treated with the Ponseti Method require a “tune-up” surgery to help balance the muscles in the foot. James was one of these kids, and he has been doing well since Dr. Noonan performed the surgery in September 2024.
“We have been really happy with everything UW Health has done for James,” says Heather. “We got incredibly lucky that he found his way to us. He is an incredible kid and the light of our lives.”
.
..
This story originally appeared on uwhealth.org.