Steppage gait is a way of walking in which the leg is lifted higher than usual so the toes can clear the ground. It develops when a person cannot lift the front of the foot, a movement called dorsiflexion, and compensates by bending the hip and knee to raise the whole leg. It is the walking pattern produced by foot drop, and it is very common in CMT because of how the disease weakens the muscles that lift the foot. The foot often lands with a slap, and the raised tripping risk is why devices like an AFO are frequently used.
When Medicine Lost Its Compass
Evidence failed not because it was wrong, but because it was weaponized. I lived the downstream effects of that failure for more than a decade. This is what happens when medicine forgets that data always ends in a human being.
