The impact of functional excess of footwear on the foot shape of 7-year-old girls and boys

Abstract

Background Properly fitted shoes can support the development of growing feet and prevent problems and pathologies, not only in childhood, but also in adulthood. This points to the need to conduct research on the impact of shoe fitting on the structure of the foot in order to raise awareness and importance of this problem, to enable proper decisions regarding the purchase and use of shoes. The aim of this study was to analyze indoor footwear fit and its impact on foot structure in 7-year-old schoolchildren. Methods The CQ-ST podoscope and the Clevermess device were used for measurements. The analysis was carried out using the Mann Whitney U test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Chi-square test, regression analysis. Results About 40% of girls and boys had shoes that were incorrectly fitted in length, while as many as 74% of girls and 66% of boys wore shoes that were incorrectly fitted in width. Regression analysis demonstrated a statistically significant influence of the footwear length on longitudinal arch of the right and left foot and the transverse arch of the right foot. In boys, the length of the shoes shows associations with the right and left hallux valgus angle. Conclusion A significant percentage of the studied 7-year-olds, regardless of gender, wears inappropriately fitted shoes. In both sexes, the length of the footwear influenced the longitudinal arch of the right and left foot and the transverse arch of the right foot. Due to the deformity of the first metatarsophalangeal joint, the boys with hallux valgus require footwear which is wider and therefore their shoes need to be bigger in size.

Relationship of the Use of Short Footwear with the Development of Hallux Valgus in a Sample of Andalusian Schoolchildren

“…The children with too-short shoes and close-fitting shoes had a higher average of HVA of three and two degrees of HVA regarding to correct-fitting and too-long shoes, respectively. However, unlike other studies the observed relationship between the fit length of the shoes and HVA was not significant [9,10,14].…”

“…The results of our study show that girls had on average more pronounced HVA than boys although without significant differences, and that in general, older children had more pronounced angles than younger ones. This finding is in disagreement with what was observed in previous studies [9,10,14]. In these studies, the relative risk for a lateral hallux deviation when wearing shoes of insufficient length was significantly higher for boys than for girls.…”

“…In the present study a 38.5% of the outdoor shoes tested were even shorter or only close-fitting (as long as the child's foot), exposing the foot to permanent strain. This percentage is similar to that reported in similar studies carried out in European schoolchildren [14]. However, the footwear fit in the children in our sample was considerably better than reported in other European preschoolers and elementary school-aged children studies [5,9,10].…”

“…The issue of poorly fitting indoor shoes is often overlooked. However, wearing shoes of insufficient length during childhood has often been cited as leading to deformities of the foot [9,10,14]. We found that 38.5% of the outdoor shoes were too short in length, that is, the difference between the length of the foot and the inside length of the shoe was less than 9 mm.…”

“…According to previous studies, specific problems (pain, hallux valgus, claw toes or skin changes) have been detected in the feet of children who used inappropriate footwear) [10,11]. Similarly, the use of ill-fitting footwear seems to be related to the development of hallux valgus in schoolchildren [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. This current study aims to evaluate the influence that an inadequate footwear fit in schoolchildren can have on the development of the deformity and establish if there is a correlation between the use of poorly fitting outdoor footwear and the development of hallux valgus in a sample of schoolchildren from southern Spain.…”