Flatfoot among school-age children in Almadinah Almunawwarah: Prevalence and risk factors

Objectives: Children with flatfoot are more vulnerable to have foot pain, foot injury, stress fractures, knee pain, and poor exercise performance. Some children may not experience any of these symptoms and the only predominant complaint would be foot pain. Flatfoot is considered a health issue that was not studied well in Saudi Arabia. The study aims to determine flatfoot prevalence among school-age children 7–14 years in Almadinah Almunawwarah and to know the effect of age, gender, and body mass index on the prevalence of flatfoot. Furthermore, a secondary aim is to find if there is a relationship between flatfoot and postactivity foot pain and participation in sports. Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytic study conducted on children aged 7–14 years living in Almadinah Almunawwarah, Saudi Arabia. Flatfoot was diagnosed using Staheli's Plantar Index. Binary logistics regression was used to predict the likelihood effect of sociodemographic data among children with flatfoot. Results: A total of 403 children had been voluntarily recruited in this study. Boys were 193 (47.9%) while 210 (52.1%) were girls. The prevalence of flatfoot was 29.5% (119), 96.6% of them were flexible flatfeet and a relatively very low incidence (3.4%) of rigid flatfeet. Age has a significant relationship on the prevalence of flatfoot (P = 0.050) where 7–8-year-old group was rated highest among other age groups in the prevalence of flatfoot. Conclusion: We found 29.5% of the children had flatfoot in the study sample. This prevalence is still high in comparison to developed countries. Furthermore, this study found a significant association between age and flatfoot in children.