Letter from Don

The inspiration for our new JumpStart^TM products originally came from our clinical experience with severely autistic children. If you’ve ever attempted to provide DAFOs for a severely autistic child, you know that some can be very difficult (or impossible) to cast. I had often thought that if we had a set of standard molds that could be easily sized and used for brace fabrication, the struggle and anxiety of casting these kids could be avoided.

For nearly 25 years, I have worked closely with Canh Nguyen, one of our top technicians, experimenting with brace design and materials. Canh set-out to develop what we hoped would be an average sized set of molds to fit most small feet, reasonably well. From these initial molds, we developed a series of thin plastic shells that we intended to use as a way of sizing the patient’s feet so we could match them to an appropriate mold from our new “mold library”. I was very pleased with how well these shells fit, and with the fit of the braces that resulted.

In the continual spirit of exploration, I tried cutting down these “fitting” shells to see if kids could wear them as temporary braces. I found that one of these shells was, in most cases, too flexible to provide adequate control. Using two of the shells, however, nesting them together one over the other provided very good support and control while still being comfortable. Hence the genesis for the JumpStarts^TM.

As we tested our prototype JumpStarts with more children, we found that these “nested shells”, provided those patients, with pronation due to low tone or delayed development, a very appropriate level of support. It struck me once again how this design, originally conceived by Nancy Hylton, incorporating a thin flexible shell fitting intimately around the foot, really does provide excellent support and control.

I am very excited about JumpStarts growing in reach to meet more children’s needs. We are finding that JumpStarts aren’t replacing custom DAFOs, but rather are reaching a population of children that previously did not have an affordable option for this level of bracing support, or maybe were not typically recognized as needing bracing attention.

Note: for more information on JumpStarts, see the Case Study and JumpStart Product Family Introduction articles in this issue, or visit our website www.cascadedafo.com.

-- Don Buethorn

Don Buethorn, CPO, is founder-owner of Cascade Dafo, Inc., and Cascade Prothestics and Orthotics.