17 April 2015
Sonny came to see me in Harley Street when he was 4 months old. His parents knew another baby who I had treated and feeling nervous about the whole situation, had reassurance from their friend and found the confidence to arrange an appointment.
Sonny’s parents noticed his head shape flattening at 10 weeks of age and at this stage sought treatment from a cranial osteopath. He was diagnosed with torticollis, which is tightness in his neck muscles restricting his movement. As a result, he slept turned to the right at all times and despite improvement in his neck movement with osteopathic treatment and repositioning his head, his parents felt his head shape was getting worse, not better.
At the assessment, Sonny was diagnosed with moderate brachycephaly and severe plagiocephaly. His parents decided to go for the LOC band treatment because it seemed nothing else was working.
Sonny took to wearing the band immediately and his head shape started to improve very quickly. He did wake in the night prior to the treatment and continued to do so during but his parents persisted and towards the end of his treatment his sleeping patterns started to improve! His head shape was corrected within 4 1/2 months and by the time his band was removed he was sleeping on his tummy.
Sonny was a very happy baby who smiled constantly and I was always surprised by how much his head had changed at each review appointment. It was a great result!
This is very much dependent on how fast your baby is growing. The faster the growth, the more frequently your baby will be seen so that the helmet can be adjusted. In general, reviews will happen at two to four-week intervals.
The price of treatment covers:
Yes - All babies that have completed their course of treatment with us have achieved a measurable improvement in head shape. However, you don’t have to take our word for it.
Recent independent research conducted by a University Hospital in Germany has endorsed the treatment for babies with moderate or severe plagiocephaly.
A larger, retrospective study has just been published that found complete correction was achieved in 94.4% of babies treated with helmet therapy.
The results were conclusive: repositioning achieved acceptable correction in 77.1% of cases, but 15.8% were moved onto helmet therapy because re-positioning was not working. Meanwhile, 94.4% of the infants who started in the helmet-treated group achieved full correction, as did 96.1% of those who were transferred from the repositioning group into the helmet-treated group.
Further information can be found on our Plagiocephaly Research page.
If your baby has a temperature or a fever due to illness you must remove the band. The band can be put back on once the temperature has returned to normal.
The optimum age for treatment is between four and seven months.
This is because the skull is most malleable at this age and improvements to head shape tend to take less time and are more dramatic. That is not to say that helmet therapy should be ruled out if the baby is older than seven months. Routinely, babies up to the age of 16 months can be treated very successfully.
The cut off age is around 18 months when the fontanelles (soft spots on the head) are no longer malleable. As babies grow and develop at different rates, it is always worth checking if you are not sure. There have been cases where a baby’s fontanelles have not fused yet by the age of 18 months, who have achieved successful, but less-marked results with cranial remoulding therapy.
Torticollis is a condition in which a tight or shortened muscle in one side of the neck causes the head to tilt or turn to one side, resulting in the infant resting its head in the same position. In 2013, we analysed the data from all first appointments in our Kingston clinic and found that 20% of the babies examined had some kind of neck condition that was causing head immobility.
The clinics and clinicians that provide this treatment in the UK will have received similar training and experience. However, we are the only clinic that manufactures its own helmet and our clinicians are closely involved with the process for each individual helmet that we produce.
In addition, we do not restrict review appointments to a set number, we are extremely flexible and respond to individual parents' needs so that the best outcome can be achieved for each baby.
The LOCband is non-invasive and works by applying gentle, constant pressure over the areas of the baby’s skull that are most prominent while allowing unrestricted growth over the flattened areas. The band consists of a soft foam layer inside a thermoplastic shell. As the baby grows, the band will be adjusted frequently to gently guide the skull into a more symmetrical shape.
