What a treated clubfoot actually looks like, at forty-one

You can find thousands of photographs of an untreated clubfoot on a newborn. You will struggle to find any of a treated one on a middle-aged adult. That absence is why people end up comparing their own feet against a picture of a condition they no longer have. These are mine, bilateral, casted from birth, operated on at four months, fused on the left at sixteen.

Written by Heath, who has lived it: casts from birth, a fusion at sixteen, and distance running.

Start here

Why you cannot find these pictures

Medical photography follows the condition, not the person. Pictures get taken to document a deformity before it is corrected, and to show the result a few months or a few years after. Then the reason to take them runs out. Nobody photographs a foot at forty-one, because by then there is no clinical question that a photograph answers.

So the image sitting at the top of every search result is a newborn, untreated, feet turned in hard. That image is doing real harm to adults, because it is the thing they measure themselves against, and it is a picture of something their foot has not been since before they can remember.

Left foot of an adult with treated bilateral clubfoot, seen from above and slightly to the side, standing barefoot on a wood floor. — **The left one, standing**Forty-one years after casting started, in a kitchen, on a Monday. This is the photograph that does not exist anywhere else, and the only reason it exists here is that I took it myself.

The honest inventory

What you actually see

Four things, and only the first is unique to having been operated on.

ScarsUsually more than one, in places that map onto the era you were treated in. Mine are covered below, with dates.

A smaller calfIt is smaller and it stays smaller. In bilateral clubfoot both are, so there is nothing alongside to compare against and it goes unnoticed for years.

A shorter, often wider footOn the treated side in one-sided clubfoot, commonly around a size. Broader through the midfoot, which is what turns shoe buying into a negotiation.

Some residual shapeA degree of cavus, adductus or heel varus is ordinary after a technically good result. It has been there all along and it is not the same thing as a relapse.

Each of those has its own page with the evidence on it. This page is the part those pages cannot do, which is show you.

The four components, named → Why the calf stays smaller → Why one foot is smaller →

Both feet of an adult with treated bilateral clubfoot, photographed from above while standing barefoot on a wood floor. — **Both of mine, from above**Bilateral means there is no unaffected side in the frame. Everything you are looking at is the treated version, which is exactly why it took me decades to work out which parts of how I walk were unusual.

Three scars, three operations

The marks, and what each one is

I could not have told you what any of these were until this month, when I finally read my own operative notes. I had carried them for four decades and known them only as the shape of my own legs.

Inner side of the lower leg and foot of an adult with treated clubfoot, showing the scar running from the midfoot up toward the shin left by posteromedial release surgery in infancy. — **Inside of the leg, both sides**Runs from the midfoot up toward the shin. This is the long incision from the releases at four months old, in July 1985, and both legs carry one because both feet were done in the same operation.

Left foot and ankle of an adult with treated clubfoot showing the surgical scar left by a triple arthrodesis performed at age sixteen. — **Across the top of the left**The triple arthrodesis, August 2001, aged sixteen. Two staples went in that day and they are still in there. The only X-ray of this foot since was for a bruise, in 2023.

Forefoot and toes of the left foot of an adult with treated clubfoot, photographed from directly above while standing barefoot. — **Dead center of the left foot**Hard to see against the vein. A wire went through there in 1985 to hold a joint in position while it healed, and it was taken out a few weeks later. I did not know that mark had a reason until I read the note.

If you were treated before roughly the 1990s, extensive surgical release was the standard approach and your scars will look broadly like mine. If you were treated after, with casting, you may have one small mark at the back of the heel and nothing else. The scars date you more accurately than the foot does.

If you had surgery as a child → What a fusion actually is →

The limit of a photograph

What none of this can tell you

This is the part that matters most and it is the part a picture is worst at.

Whether it movesFlexible against rigid is the single most useful thing anyone can tell you about a treated foot, and a specialist establishes it in about thirty seconds by hand. No photograph has ever shown it.

Whether it hurtsFeet that look poor can be comfortable all day. Feet that photograph well can be painful by the afternoon. The two run independently.

What it can doNothing in these images predicts distance, work on your feet, or what happens on uneven ground. That is measured by doing it.

Whether yours is normalThere is no normal here to compare against. Treated clubfeet vary enormously, and a foot that looks unlike mine is not therefore worse or better.

If you came here to find out whether your foot looks the way it should, the honest answer is that I cannot tell you, and neither can a photograph of somebody else. What a picture is genuinely good for is the opposite question. Not is mine normal, but am I the only one. You are not.

The gap

The part I cannot photograph

The thing that actually hurts barefoot is not in any of these pictures.

There is a bone on the outer side of my midfoot that takes weight it was not designed to take. I have always assumed it is the base of the fifth metatarsal, standing proud because of the way the foot curves inward, and a clinic note from when I was fifteen does record a prominent and painful spot in the same place. Nobody has ever examined it for that as an adult and no imaging identifies it, so I am not going to state the bone as fact on a page people may take to an appointment.

I also cannot show it to you, which took me a while to work out. The border rolls under, so from the side and from above there is nothing to see. It only appears from underneath, and you cannot hold a camera and lift your own foot at the same time.

Outer border of the foot of an adult with treated clubfoot, photographed at floor level while standing barefoot. — **The outer border, at floor level**The part being described sits just out of sight, under the edge you can see here. That it is hidden from every normal angle is probably why it went four decades without anyone naming it.

Where adult clubfoot pain turns up → When to get it looked at →

What adult clubfoot looks like

What does clubfoot look like in adults?

After successful treatment, usually unremarkable at a glance. Closer up: surgical scars if you were treated in the surgical era, a calf that is visibly smaller on the affected side, a foot that is often shorter and broader, and some residual inward curve through the midfoot. Adults who were treated well are rarely identified as having clubfoot by strangers. They identify themselves by their shoes.

Do adults with clubfoot have scars?

It depends entirely on when you were treated. Extensive surgical release was standard before roughly the 1990s and leaves long scars, typically on the inside of the leg from the midfoot toward the shin. Ponseti casting, which displaced surgery as the default, commonly leaves one small mark at the back of the heel from a tenotomy, and sometimes nothing visible at all.

Can you tell someone had clubfoot by looking at their feet?

Often not, standing still and shod. A clinician looking deliberately at a bare foot usually can, from the calf, the heel position and the shape of the midfoot. A stranger in a swimming pool generally cannot, which is a genuinely reassuring thing for teenagers to hear and one nobody thinks to say.

Does a treated clubfoot look normal?

Treatment was never aiming at a normal-looking foot. It aims at a plantigrade one, meaning a foot that puts its sole on the ground, fits a shoe and does not hurt. Measured against that, a foot with visible residual shape can be a complete success, and a flexible foot that looks unusual generally beats a straight one that will not move.

Why is one clubfoot foot smaller than the other?

In one-sided clubfoot the affected foot is commonly about a size shorter and the calf is smaller, and both persist into adulthood regardless of how good the correction was. In bilateral clubfoot both sides are affected, so the difference often goes unnoticed because there is nothing to compare it against.

Provenance

Where this comes from

The photographs are mine, taken in September 2026, unretouched apart from cropping and resizing. I am forty-one, with bilateral clubfoot recorded as congenital talipes equinovarus, casted from the birth admission, operated on at four months and fused on the left at sixteen.

The dates attached to each scar come from my own operative records, which I hold: the Sarasota admission of July 1985 and the Shriners file covering 1988 and 2001. Which scar belongs to which operation is my identification, matched against what those notes say was done and where.

The general statements on this page about calf size, foot size and residual components are not sourced here. They are covered, with their citations, on the pages linked above, and I would rather send you to the evidence than restate it badly.

Nothing on this page is a clinical reading of a photograph. The only time a clinician has examined or X-rayed either foot in my adult life was an urgent care visit in 2023 for a bruise, which was not about any of this, so any sentence that would require an examination to support it is not here.

Keep going

The adult clubfoot hub → What is still there, and what it is called → The teenage years → Shoes that actually work →

Written by Heath, founder of Clubfoot Forward, an adult with bilateral clubfoot, extensive childhood surgery, a left-sided relapse and a triple arthrodesis. Photographs of his own feet, published so that adults searching for this have something to look at other than a newborn. Lived experience and orientation, not medical advice, and not a substitute for having your own foot examined. Reviewed September 2026. See the editorial policy.