Serial Casting

[brookepoague]

We are looking at serial casting for my son. His OT has alot of experience with it and is working closing with his doctors in Cincinnati. One big concern of mine is the costs. We are going to talk to her about it Friday, but what does serial casting run? I know there's prob. a large variation but just some of your experiences? Insurance won't cover it, of course.

[Mare]

What are the chances of the contracture coming back Frankie went from 65 degrees to 35 with serial casting but as soon as we stopped it the contracture came back so for us it would have been a big waste of money luckily our insurance covered it. Good luck Mare

[brookepoague]

I guess there's always the chance of anything not working or not being permanent. However, for my peace of mind I need to do anything that I can that could result in Grant's making a "fuller" recovery. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but at least I won't be wondering if it could've benefited him and I didn't do it.

[LoriV]

We are on our second round of serial casting. It just gets billed to insurance as a therapy visit and our insurance does cover it. You may want to double check with your insurance. It seems odd that they wouldn't cover it. It's a pretty common treatment for a variety of conditions.

We were able to get to zero degrees with it. Then he had surgery and was casted with the arm bent for a month. Needless to say, the contracture was back. That's why we are on a second round. After we are done with the casting we will do a nighttime splint to maintain it.

[F-Litz]

I'm not a therapist or a doctor but in my layman's mind I think that contractures that are caused by stuff going on in the shoulder joint are the ones that easily return because you're not addressing the cause with a serial cast. But if the contracture is truly coming from the posturing / habit / muscle imbalance then I think it can last.

Maia got serial casted and she did great with it. And we used that wonderful belly buster (gutter) splint for months at night to keep it status quo. Then we stopped splinting - we actually lost the splint - then we found it and during that time period, Maia got more internally rotated and when we resplinted, it didn't feel good and actually caused pressure/pain in the shoulder joint.

I noticed that as the internal rotation got worse, he arm wanted to be bent because it was the position of comfort and sticking straight out put too much pressure on the shoulder.

Of course, like I said, I don't know if anything I said has any basis at all but it's something for you to possibly check out with your specialist.

[brookepoague]

We would actually be using the casting as a tool for strengthening his BPI arm. The initial cast would be from the shoulder down. From there the casts move down and the final one is just his wrist and hand. This will force him to use him hand correctly while weight bearing which is an issue for us right now.

Anyone used serial casting for this?