Cavus foot is a foot that has an excessive planting vault, as the vault is increased certain areas that are normally in contact with the ground in these feet are not, and therefore the charges are concentrated in a smaller area than in a normal foot The overloaded areas are the head of the metatarsals and the heel.
The causes can be hereditary or due to neurological or muscular diseases (poliomyelitis, spina bifida or Friedrich ataxia). Also certain rheumatic diseases can evolve producing a cavus foot.
In many cases when the deformity is not very apparent, it does not cause pain. In these feet is more frequent the appearance of metatarsalgia (pain under the head of the metatarsals), calluses in excessive points of support (metatarsal head and heel). Over time, there may be deformities in the fingers (claw toe) that in turn produce pain when touching the footwear. The alteration in the transmission of the loads can facilitate the appearance of osteoarthritis and tendinitis that will also produce pain in different points of the foot.
In addition to the usual measures to avoid excessive overloads (obesity) and the use of appropriate footwear. Templates may be used to increase the support area of the foot and / or to discharge areas of higher pressure (such as the head of the metatarsals). Tendinitis and acute pain may be treated episodically with anti-inflammatories and analgesics. Finally, surgery will only be performed in the rare cases of feet with large deformities and intractable pain with conservative measures. With surgery, we will try to restore the normal shape of the foot by cutting and realigning certain bones that participate in the deformity or by fusing the joints that have evolved to osteoarthritis. In the cases in which claw fingers are produced and these are the origin of the pain, they can be reoriented through surgery.