Hi guys. This is Christina the Amputee OT. In this video
I am going to talk about heel height adjustable feet for prosthetics.
*machinery and welding sounds*
This is a question I get asked to me all the time.
People want to know if I can wear high heels or different types of boots with my prosthetic.
Most prosthetics are set up to be worn with only one heel height of foot. Now for a non-amputee,
you might be wondering why this is. Like, why can't I just go and wear whatever kind of high heel
I want? If you wear the wrong heel height with your foot. It totally messes up the
biomechanics of your prosthetic. Let me show you what I mean. This is the prosthetic
that I currently have. It's the Renegade All-Terrain Low-Profile made by Freedom Innovations, and this is a great foot,
but it's only meant for one heel height. So you can see,
if I wear a regular flat type of shoe or a heel height that's pretty low, then the
prosthetic is straight up and down,
which is what it should be. Should be straight up and down right here, but here's what happens when I try to wear heels.
You can see that now my
angle is really steep forward and my knee is being forced bent. If I were to stand up straight, my heel will be off the ground.
So I kind of have to walk like this,
which
looks ridiculous.
If I try to walk straight, my knee gets forced into flexion, so that the foot is flat on the ground.
So this doesn't really work. And so you might be asking,
"Christina, what is the solution to this problem?"
Well, you could go a couple of ways. For one you could have multiple feet that you screw in to your prosthetic that
are of varying heel heights. In fact, a company, Kingsley, makes a bunch of different feet in different heel heights for just this purpose.
So that you can have specific feet for different shoes for different heel heights, but there's also another solution,
and that is to have a foot that has an adjustable heel height mechanism built into it and guess what I have.
This is The Runway, and it is super cool and here's why it's so cool. On the inside,
there is a slider mechanism that you can use to adjust the heel height of the foot. So right now,
it's set up for flats, but if I press the button,
now it's set up for heels.
I can wear heels!
And when I want to change out of my heels and into my flip-flops
*soft click*
Okay, so we're about to get real up close and personal with this foot.
So, what that means for me is getting to take it apart.
By the way,
I would not recommend taking apart your feet unless you're very familiar with how to do it or
if you have your prosthetist show you how to do it
*loud clank*
So, you've got your foot shell.
Which has a split toe so you can wear flip-flops, got your inner sock,
and that's it. That's the foot shell.
And this slider mechanism here is what allows you to be able to adjust the heel height. So you press this button,
and it just slides on in there. And I don't know if you can see,
but there are little notches right here for the heel height adjustment, so it's not really infinite.
There's actually ten little notches so you can place this
ankle part in ten different positions.
Press the button. Slide it down.
You can also slide it,
stop it in the middle.
This is the little heel.
Can see underneath it says
"22" for 22 centimeters and "cat 2" that is your weight category.
And it's specific to each brand, so if you want to know what your weight is you'll have to go to each brand of
prosthetics website and check it out. Okay.
So, maybe we should see what it looks like when it's actually on my prosthetic. Here
you'll be able to see how this flexes without the foot shell.
Like there at the heel. *soft clicks*
The foot itself flexes.
*clicks and scrapes*
*loud clicks*
Here it is flexing without a shoe on. It's not really that comfortable to wear without shoes.
*loud thumps*
The really cool thing about The Runway is that it's actually meant for active amputees. So,
the other feet that the other manufacturers make are good
and I don't have a problem with those, but those are made for people who are maybe not quite so active. Now
I know you're probably not going to go jogging in your stilettos for example, but
this foot is really nice, because when you use it everyday with a flatter foot
you can use it for basically any kind of activity that you want to throw at it. Now compared to The Renegade,
which is the other foot
I have, this foot is maybe not so squishy and springy and doesn't give quite the same energy return,
but to be honest, it's actually pretty darn close. And there might be maybe a little bit of a dead spot on rollover,
but it's actually not so bad.
Now if you're wondering what I mean by dead spot, here's what I mean. Say you've got a foot that you're walking on,
so you're walking on this foot and as you walk
what feels the most natural is to have it roll over really smoothly.
But on prosthetics that have a dead spot, it doesn't roll over quite as smoothly.
There's sort of a spot that is dead in the middle.
That makes the foot a little bit more jerky feeling and feel a little bit less natural.
This is a big problem with prosthetics because what you want is for your foot to feel the most natural and
so if there's a dead spot, then
not only does it not feel as natural,
but you also have to control your knee a lot more to keep your knee from being stuck sort of in one position.
So this shoe for example would roll over more naturally
instead of stopping.
So that's what I mean when I say a dead spot.
And I know that probably people who aren't amputees are not really going to
understand the importance of having a foot that doesn't have a dead spot. And if you're an amputee
and you've only had one foot,
you might not know what I'm talking about either.
But if you've tried multiple feet you can really feel the difference between a foot
that's got a dead spot and a foot that rolls over really smoothly.
So The Runway has maybe a little bit of a dead spot,
but it's really not nearly as bad as some of the other feet that I've tried.
It's actually pretty darn smooth and be honest after a couple days of wearing The Runway,
I hardly even noticed it now as far as you gentlemen out there go,
do not think that this adjustable heel height foot is only for the ladies
who want to wear the stilettos and the fancy shoes. Have you ever changed from
flip-flops to hiking boots you might have noticed if you're an amputee that
hiking boots a lot of the times have a heel whereas flip-flops are totally flat.
So this, foot is actually not just for the ladies. They can be used for the gentlemen as well.
I think that this foot is great for really active people.
It is definitely not quite as springy as The Renegade and I noticed
when I was walking over uneven ground that it's not quite as forgiving over uneven ground
as The Renegade, but actually it's pretty close to be honest.
I think probably what I'm going to do, is use The Renegade for hiking and for outdoor activities,
but use The Runway most of the time especially because I like that you can change shoes back and forth
and I really like that you can wear flip-flops, because I'm kind of a flip-flops and sandals sort of person.
By the way if you are wondering how to keep your flip-flops on your foot. I have a really easy solution for that.
Velcro!
Just take some soft sided Velcro and stick it to the bottom of your foot, and then get the rough
Velcro and stick it to your flip-flop. And the reason you don't want to use the rough Velcro on
your foot is so you don't go sticking to the carpet when you are walking around barefoot. All right, everybody.
That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this video.
I hope that I answered some of your questions about heel height adjustable feet for prosthetics. If you have any questions,
you can leave them in the comment section below. You can subscribe to my channel if you like, because I put out new videos
every Wednesday. And here's to being able to wear whatever shoes you want. High-five.