How long was your helmet therapy?

[kfa329]

Hi, I'm new here. My daughter was diagnosed with bicoronal cranio last week. We're interested in having the endoscopic surgery and had some questions about the length of time for the helmet therapy. We would love hearing from you! Answers to the following questions would be especially helpful.

What type of cranio did your child have?
Where did he/she have the surgery?
At what age?
How many helmets did your child have and at what ages did he/she need a new one?
At what age or how many months post-op did your child not need a helmet anymore?

Thanks so much for your help!!!

[Sophia's_mom]

Hi Kelli and welcome to CK! My daughter had Sagittal Cranio and we had the Endo surgery for her. She was 4 1/2 months old at surgery (3 1/2 months corrected age, she was a month early). We are in MO and had surgery at St. Louis Children's, we only had an overnight stay in the PICU and then were released to go home. We are almost done with helmet therapy, and have gone thru 2 helmets. We got the first helmet the week after surgery and it lasted about 3 months, the second helmet has lasted since then (almost 5 months).

I don't know very much about bicoronal so I'm sure the time frames may be different, and our surgeon always recommends staying in the helmet until the kids are 12 months old so that could differ from your docs too.

Good luck with everything. I know it is a scary diagnosis, but it's very fixable and the kids do great with surgery. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[Leighasmom]

Bicoronal Mom here...
Leigha had helmet after her cranio vault surgery. We had the helmet from end of May until the end of September 2001 and had some great results. (Leigha's surgery was May 01, 2001 and she was ten mths old her 1st day in the helmet was May 25th her last was Sept 24, 2001) I believe the type of helmet, type of surgery, and the intial correction the surgeon does. Some surgeons reli on the post-op helmet to do more molding so they aren't in surgery longer fine tuning touch ups.
We used a DOC band but there is no longer a cranial tech available in Kansas City Missouri(I believe the closest is Texas) so I'm guessing the Star band or another type of helmet is offered now.