Prevalence of flatfoot among school students and its relationship with BMI

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the relation between theflat-footedness and obesity.Materials and Methods: A total of 1158 school children (653 male and 505 female) participated in thiscross sectional descriptive study. According to their age, children were divided into three groups for eachgender (6e10, 11e13, 14e18 years old). Diagnosis and severity of flatfoot was assessed in using theDennis method. BMI of children were calculated as body weight divided by height squared (kg*m 2).Results: Majority (83.9%) of respondents had normal feet. The prevalence offlatfoot was 16.1% with adecreasing trend with age. Boys had a higher frequency offlatfoot than girls; however the difference wasnot signiŞcant (p > 0.05). The prevalence of flatfoot was 17.5% in boys and 14.5% in girls. The percentageof overweight and obese children was 10.3%. A signiŞcant difference in the prevalence of flatfoot occurredbetween; under-weight (13.9%), normal-weight (16.1%), overweight (26.9%), and obese (30.8%); children.Conclusion: The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity is one of the most serious health challengesacross the globe, and a positive correlation between increased BMI; andflatfoot is one of the potentialcomplications.© 2016 Turkish Association of Orthopaedics and Traumatology. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is anopen access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).