Sever's Disease Treatment Wimbledon

What is Sever's Disease?:

Sever's Disease is a painful condition that commonly affects pre and early teens, with boys being statistically more prone to it. However, girls, especially dancers or jumpers, can also experience its effects. Typically seen in sporty or active individuals, Sever's Disease primarily manifests as heel pain, although it can also affect a single ankle in some cases.

Understanding the Condition:

Sever's Disease is caused by a combination of overuse of the calf muscle and the challenges posed by bone growth during the pre-teen years. As the Achilles tendon or heel cord pulls on the heel to facilitate development, the repetitive stress on the semi-solid bone leads to pain in the affected area. Over time, this pain can spread to the heel cord (Achilles tendon) and calf muscle. Traditional Approaches and Limitations: Until about a decade ago, the only available treatment options for Sever's Disease involved rest and medication.

However, it can be challenging and often not ideal to ask a child to remain immobile or rely solely on pills for relief.

Introducing Innovative Severs Disease Treatment Solutions

- ESWT: For cases where traditional approaches have not yielded satisfactory results or have even worsened the condition, we offer a groundbreaking therapy called Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT).

This non-invasive treatment utilises acoustic sound waves directed into the heel area but not on the growth plate for 1-2 minutes, stimulating bone vibration and increasing bone density and inflammation recovery. We also use the technology on the associated Achilles tendon and calf muscles. 

Remarkably, many children report feeling better even after a single session. Moreover, the pain relief percentage often continues to improve even after completing the treatment sessions, thanks to the "Carry-Over effect."

Enhanced Comfort with Focused Shock Wave Therapy: 

To ensure a more comfortable experience for our young clients, we have introduced Focused Shock Wave Therapy, significantly reducing discomfort during the treatment. Unlike the traditional Radial Shock Wave Therapy (SWT) that involves skin stimulation, the focused approach minimizes pain, offering only a mild ache for about a minute, akin to a gentle squeezing sensation in the heel. The discomfort associated with Focused Shock Wave Therapy is often less than that caused by Sever's Disease.

Choosing the Right Type of Shock Wave Therapy: 

Radial Shock Wave Therapy (R-SWT) and Focused Shock Wave Therapy (F-SWT) have successfully treated Sever's Disease.

While the older Radial SWT type may have been previously recommended for cases where pain persists for over four months and the child client experiences rest-related depression, our clinic introduced the Focused SWT type in early 2022.

Why did we introduce focused SWT for our servers' disease suffers?

Efficenciesies

This new approach (F-SWT) has shown excellent results with younger patients, who often heal faster (an average of three weeks). As a result, the standard recommendation of three sessions plus may only sometimes be necessary for children with more complex Sever's Disease or where Sever's symptoms may co-exist with other issues.

Accuracy 

Focused shock wave therapy helps us treat the area around the growth planet so we are not directly stimulating the plate. Radial shock wave therapy isn't as accurate, so it means some stimulation may happen. Although this is deemed not problematic or dangerous, it gives us a cleaner outcome with more comfort.

What is the correct type of shock wave therapy for Sever's disease treatment? 

Sensations during Treatment:

For this part of Sever treatment with the shock wave, we must think about the discomfort of the technologies as often it's our child we are choosing treatment for. Firstly, we should note that we see substantial results at the clinic WITHOUT shock wave intervention in over 50% of cases. Mainly because there Dr or therapist wasn't specialising in the condition and used googled treatment algorithms that were not appropriate to the individual case. or surprising that the servers diagnosis was either not correct or other heal pains like subtalar and medial tibial stress pains were bigger issue than the severs. Either way below are the two subsets of shock wave therapy with notes about sensation rated to Severs.

Focused Shock Wave Therapy:

During this treatment, there is no skin stimulation involved. Children may experience only mild discomfort, such as a light ache lasting for about a minute. Parents should note that this sensation is often less intense than the discomfort caused by Sever's Disease itself, so most kids are happy with it. The intensity is set low and taken up slowly within the child's tolerance to lessen the yield.

Radial Shock Wave Therapy: 

This type of SWT treatment involves stimulating the skin, resulting in a flicking sensation with each pulse, whether directly targeting the tissues or not. While discomfort is higher with the radial approach, it is still tolerable for children.

 Promising Results:

Typically, three sessions of ESWT using a CE-marked BTL ESWT machine provide significant relief, with most patients experiencing 80-99% pain reduction within four weeks.

Focused Shock Wave Therapy, why is it our choice:

The Focused type of Shock Wave Treatment does NOT stimulate the skin, & instead directly targets the tissues. This type is much more comfortable in children with Severs and has better outcomes for bone stimulation.

It is important to note that Focused and Radial modalities utilize lower settings for bone healing stimulation in children due to their heightened skin sensitivity.

By combining our expertise with these advanced treatment options, we aim to provide practical and comfortable solutions for severe disease, allowing children to heal and return to active lifestyles with minimal pain and inconvenience.