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Tarsal
Coalitions refer to an abnormal bridging of tissue and/or bone between two bones. The bridging can range from a simple
band of tissue to complete boney bar. Coalitions are more then likely congenital and start becoming evident by 12-15
years of age. Many patients go years pain-free. The late Gerard Yu, DPM and I both agreed after years of research that patients who had neutral (normal) feet were
less likely to become symptomatic, thus coalitions were far more common then ever reported. After almost 15 years of clinical research, I have seen over a 1000 cases. I also theorized
that coalitions were going undiagnosed because only the symptomatic patients were coming in for treatment. Research from 2000-2003: After
review of over 40,000 foot and ankle xrays, 1000 CT-SCAN’s and 500 MRI’s over a three year period, tarsal coalitions
were found in 267 patients. Only 60 were symptomatic that actually came in for treatment
during that time period. Talocalcaneal coalitions were the most prevalent
during this series (154); however, during my 15 years, calcaneonavicular were overwhelming the most common symptomatic coalition
that presented to the clinic. Within this series, we only found 105 cases.
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