Ignacio Ponseti

He was born on 3 June 1914 in Menorca, part of the Balearic Islands, Spain, Ponseti was the son of a watchmaker and spent his childhood helping repair watches.

He left Spain shortly after the end of the war and became a faculty member and practicing physician at the University of Iowa, where he developed his ground-breaking, non-surgical treatment for the clubfoot defect - the Ponseti Method.

[2] The method was met with some opposition but over the past 50 years it has been adopted by the majority of doctors and other health care providers worldwide, being considered the gold standard for treatment, including in Britain[3] and Turkey.

He gained insight in the early 1950s on the effect of amino nitriles on collagen cross linking, defined the curvature patterns of idiopathic scoliosis, and demonstrated that curves progressed after skeletal maturity.

[7] Early in his career at the University of Iowa, Ponseti realized that surgical approaches did not fully correct clubfoot and/or created problems later in life, such as severe arthritis or even requiring more surgery.

In addition to the improved physical outcomes, compared to surgery, the Ponseti method is less expensive and can be taught to nonphysician health care providers, which is useful in areas with few or no doctors.

[8] The Ponseti method is effective when properly applied by a trained health care provider and is considered the "gold standard" treatment, leading to a normal, productive life.

At the 2007, International Clubfoot Symposium attended by 200 doctors from 44 countries, papers were presented regarding an estimated 10,000 children successfully treated with the technique around the world in recent years.