PROFICIENCY OF FOOT CARE SPECIALISTS TO PLACE THE REARFOOT AT SUBTALAR NEUTRAL

The proficiency of clinicians to place a rearfoot at the subtalar neut ral position is important for the treatment of patients with lower ext remity dysfunctions, and especially for foot orthosis prescription, fa brication, and management. However, the ability of experienced foot ca re specialists to perform this task has not been statistically compare d with an average capacity. In this study, eight experienced chiropodi sts and eight untrained physiotherapy students placed six rearfeet at the subtalar neutral position five times. Statistically, the foot care specialists were able to find the subtalar neutral position better th an the students (mean 0.00 versus 0.99 degrees, SD 1.84 versus 2.97 de grees, range -5.27 degrees to 4.33 degrees versus -6.25 degrees to 9.2 7 degrees). This can be interpreted as stating that foot care speciali sts and untrained students place a rearfoot within +/- 1 degrees of th e subtalar neutral position 41.3% and 25.0% of the time, respectively. Corresponding values within +/- 2 degrees of the subtalar neutral pos ition are 72.3 degrees and 47.6 degrees, respectively. Alternatively, it can be stated that experienced foot care specialists are within +/- 3.0 degrees of the subtalar neutral position 90% of the time. A corre sponding value for the students is +/- 4.9 degrees. These results sugg est that although experienced foot care specialists position a rearfoo t at the subtalar neutral position better than untrained physiotherapy students, there is room for improvement.