Editor’s Note–May 2025

O&P clinicians often find themselves embracing challenges beyond the lessons they were taught in school. That includes things as diverse as negotiating the relationship with parents and creating components that aren’t available in pediatric cases, getting involved in advocacy, and coordinating with other healthcare providers about patients’ health conditions that impact successful prosthetic use. In this issue we explore a few of these aspects of O&P practitioners’ experience that go far beyond their textbooks.

Pediatric care is by its nature difficult in the best of circumstances—components may not fit, children don’t communicate or reason like adults, and the parents’ emotions also need to be considered. Sometimes though, a patient’s specific situation is so rare or occurs with several comorbidities that finding a suitable O&P solution is especially challenging. In “Tough Cases in Pediatrics: Finding Creative Solutions,” prosthetists share lessons learned from these complicated cases that can be used in everyday practice as well as the unique approaches they took with individual patients.