During the early stages of pregnancy, a foetus’ toes (and fingers) are joined together and look, quite simply like a mitten of skin. By eight or nine weeks into the pregnancy, the skin will dissolve leaving all of the toes and the fingers separate.
It is not uncommon, though, for this procedure not to happen and the child will be born with a toes or fingers that are joined together. This is called syndactyly. Sometimes there are only a couple of digits that are affected; in some instances, it affects them all.
The way that the toes or fingers are joined can also be different. For some children the webbing is just a case of the skin being still joined, for other children the join can consist of tendons, nerves, blood vessels and bone.
There have been cases where incidents of syndactyly seem to be inherited and therefore have a genetic influence, but the majority of cases are completely isolated and occur in otherwise very healthy babies.
The condition also has other forms of severity, for some children the webbing may be so minimal that it does not impair movement or use, so there is no need for any treatment to rectify it. In other cases, surgery may be necessary.
If this is the case, it is done with extreme care in order to minimize the amount of scarring. It is necessary to take small skin grafts from another part of the body in order to cover the space where the separation has taken place.
In most cases surgery does not take place until the child has reached a minimum age of two, when the growth has slowed down somewhat, but half of the children affected will need another operation when they have reached their full size.
It is not uncommon, though, for this procedure not to happen and the child will be born with a toes or fingers that are joined together. This is called syndactyly. Sometimes there are only a couple of digits that are affected; in some instances, it affects them all.
The way that the toes or fingers are joined can also be different. For some children the webbing is just a case of the skin being still joined, for other children the join can consist of tendons, nerves, blood vessels and bone.
There have been cases where incidents of syndactyly seem to be inherited and therefore have a genetic influence, but the majority of cases are completely isolated and occur in otherwise very healthy babies.
The condition also has other forms of severity, for some children the webbing may be so minimal that it does not impair movement or use, so there is no need for any treatment to rectify it. In other cases, surgery may be necessary.
If this is the case, it is done with extreme care in order to minimize the amount of scarring. It is necessary to take small skin grafts from another part of the body in order to cover the space where the separation has taken place.
In most cases surgery does not take place until the child has reached a minimum age of two, when the growth has slowed down somewhat, but half of the children affected will need another operation when they have reached their full size.
