All Martin Egbert wanted was the best treatment for his son. What he found was a unique, nonsurgical method of treating clubfoot—promulgated on the Internet—and an opportunity to share his discovery with others.
When Egbert and his wife, Allyson, welcomed a newborn son into their family, their joy was accompanied with the shocking news that their infant boy had clubfoot. This congenital birth defect, which causes a baby’s feet to be turned downward and inward, occurs in one of every one thousand births and traditionally has required invasive surgery.
“We were a bit overwhelmed and struggled to understand the condition that affected our newborn baby,” Egbert says. “We sought guidance and found more than we ever could have hoped for.”
As Egbert searched for the best treatment for his son’s clubfoot, he found his answer on the Internet. The Ponseti method—developed by Doctor Ignacio Ponseti at the University of Iowa Medical School—is a nonsurgical way of treating clubfoot that involves manipulation of the feet and weekly casting. While the method is faster and more affordable than other alternatives, most doctors ignored it as a viable treatment from the time it was first introduced in the early 1950s until the late 1990s.
“Even though there was plenty of long-term documentation to support the Ponseti method, until recently, doctors preferred methods that also required major surgery,” Egbert says. “It wasn’t until Dr. Ponseti published his book in 1996 and the University of Iowa’s virtual hospital posted information about the method on the Internet that parents and then doctors began to take notice.”
After learning about the Ponseti method in 1999, Egbert took his six-week-old son to Iowa for treatment. The casting procedures corrected young Joshua’s feet and gave him the chance for a normal, active lifestyle. Since then, Egbert has seized the opportunity to inform others of the nonsurgical option using Internet message boards. “I felt other new parents would be interested in trying the Ponseti method with their own children—if only they knew it existed,” he says.
As the Ponseti method gained acceptance among patients and doctors, Egbert noted the Internet’s power to change mainstream medical treatments. People increasingly look to the Internet for information about medical treatments and rely less on a doctor’s expertise, he says.
Egbert helped document the success of marketing medical procedures on the Internet. He co-authored a study, with Drs. Ponseti and Jose Morcuende from the University of Iowa, which examined the Internet’s role in curing clubfoot. In August 2002, the three presented their paper on clubfoot at the Third International Congress on Clubfoot in San Diego.
Egbert has teamed with two doctors to implement training programs for doctors and nurses outside the United States—focusing specifically on Polynesians, who are affected by clubfoot at a rate six times greater than Caucasians.
Egbert earned his BS in zoology from BYU in 1979 and his MBA from BYU in 1981. He is a partner in RMI Development, LLC, a company that builds and manages multifamily developments in Las Vegas. Egbert is also a member of the Marriott School Real Estate Advisory Board. He and his wife have six children and reside in Henderson, Nevada.
For more information about the Ponseti method go to www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/orthopaedics/clubfeet.
