How can padding help foot problems?

Friction can cause havoc with our feet causing pain in the form of corns, calluses and blisters. Although corns and calluses can be reduced, relieving pressure, they can still be sore when wearing shoes. Foot Health Practitioners can alleviate pain through a variety of dressings. Read on to find out more about them.

Tubegauze is tube shaped and is applied as a sock over a digit to keep an inner dressing in place. They are particularly useful when protecting the digits from the pressure of corns.

Toe Foam by Hapla (Tubegauze)

Fleecy web is brushed cotton material used to cover a 3D surface without folding or creasing. It gives great comfort and protection despite being minimally thin. When it is applied to a skin’s surface that has been prepared with compound benzoin tincture or friar’s balsam, it is able to retain on the plantar surface of the foot for 4-6 weeks. It can even withstand showering throughout this time. Again, fleecy web is really useful for offloading weight more evenly which provides relief from painful corns. It is available in a range of thicknesses allowing for a more precise protection. One of the benefits of fleecy web is that you can cut it to any shape desired so that it is personalised and there is very little waste.

Adhesive cushioning can be used in many forms such as foam sheets. Polyurethane foams collapse quickly but latex foams are dense and last longer than other foot types. The foams may be ‘closed cell’ or ‘open cell’ construction and have a variety of characteristics. When deciding which padding to use, practitioners must consider how quickly the foam recovers after being compressed. Foams that recover quickly after compression will recover their full thickness before the next compression. Where the foam recovers slowly, it will retain the memory of the last indentation.    

Padding is also available in many forms such as traditional felts, fleece, latex, polyurethane foams, synthetic, rubbers, expanded polyethylene and expanded vinyl acetates. More modern padding uses contain silicon, cross-linked polymers and hydrogels. Practitioners develop their own preferences for certain products. Each individual patient may need slightly different padding to provide optimum comfort. Conventional designs may need modification to suit individual requirements. Where padding is placed directly over lesions, it will put pressure on the lesion. If padding is placed around a lesion with the aim of preventing the shoe from touching it, then the pressure is able to be reapplied more evenly to the other surfaces. Padding can be applied to the skin’s surface directly and held in position by adhesive. The disadvantage of this is that it is likely to come off once it has been immersed in water. Another option is to make the padding removable, keeping it in place with loops or elastic retention bands.

   Padding can also be made to stay in footwear either as an insole or as a pad that is stuck in. It may be used to protect the heels, pads or prevent rubbing from the tongue of the shoe. Careful consideration is needed here though as any padding will add to the size/shape of the foot overall which may add friction or pressure in other areas, exacerbating the problem. The metatarsal pad can be adhered directly to the skin or made detachable depending on the needs of the patient. Where a patient is unable to reach their feet, an adhesive pad is the more sensible choice whereas a detachable pad would suit more mobile patients. The dorsal roll/plantar prop is useful for the protection of toe lesions. Apical problems can be protected by wearing the padding under the toes in order to lift the tips away from the inner sole surface of the shoes. When the dorsal roll is worn, it protects lesions on the dorsal interphalangeal joints and helps to control mobile retracted lesser toes. The recommendation is that this device is made for the dorsal aspect of the foot so that it is simple to fit and wear.