Introduction: Children of school age are in a slow phase of growth and development in which the skeleton grows slowly, and due to the still unfinished process of ossification, the skeleton of the children is still subject to various deviations. Nowadays, the practical application of new possibilities of objective qualitative as well as quantitative determination of foot deformation in children and youth is becoming more and more widespread. Pedobarography is a special technical discipline that developed within podiatry, an orthopedic subspecialty that deals with the foot.
Research objective: To determine the effect of swimming on the transverse arch of junior sports swimmers compared to the control groups. Methods: The research was carried out in the private practice of the physiatrist “Sporticus” – dr. Edin Buljugić and the “Otoka Olympic pool” in Sarajevo. The research method is retrospective-prospective, and the type of research is cross-sectional-observational.
Results: The analysis revealed that the average age of the total sample was 10.85±2.50 years. Our results showed that swimming does not significantly change the longitudinal and transverse arch of the foot. Research findings show that swimmers had a better transmission of forces and pressure, especially on the lateral part of the foot, while subjects who did not swim had more pressure on the medial part. The research also showed that the status of the feet is significantly better in children who started swimming in early childhood, compared to the feet of children who started swimming after the age of 10.
Conclusion: Swimming does not change the transversal arch of the foot.
Keywords: pedobarography, arches of the foot, swimming, junior swimmers
