Flat Foot Survey in 8 Year Old Primary School Children

Park, In Heon; Song, Kyung Won; Shin, Sung Il; Lee, Jin Young; Lee, Seung Yong; Kim, Tae Heung; Park, Jae Yong

Abstract

PURPOSE: To estimate the prevalence of flat foot in the 1st grade primary school children in the Kang-Dong Gu, Seoul, Korea.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
We examined 1336 8 year old the first grade children (2672 feet) in primary school at 5 primary school for prevalence of flat foot and the associating factors in Kang-Dong Gu in April 2003. The group was examined with 2 mm-pannel in physical examination at erect position to put diagnosis of flat foot which showed no plantar arch. The height, weight, foot length and foot width were estimated in all children. We used obesity grading system of Korean Pediatric Association for overweight evaluation.
RESULTS
We enrolled 728 boys and 608 girls, and prevalences of each gender were 20.8% and 14.9%. The children who had flat foot were 243 and the prevalence of flat foot was 18.2%. The foot length ranges between 152 mm and 300 mm (mean value 183.6 mm, SD 10.6), and the foot width were between 50 mm and 107 mm (mean value 2.16 mm, SD 4.8). Of the 1336 children group, 1215 children (90.0%) were in range of normal weight, 72 children (5.4%) were in grade-1 overweight, 38 (2.8%) were in grade-2 overweigh and, 11 (0.8%) were in grade-3 overweight. The prevalence of flat foot of each overweight group were 16.3%, 34.7%, 39.5% and 45.5%. Overweight in children effected increased prevalence of flat foot. But there were no significant relationship with flat foot in other factors.
CONCLUSION
Over all prevalence of flat foot of 8 year old children was 18.2% and most of patients were flexible flat foot. The prevalence of flat foot was influenced by overweight remarkably.