Our team includes certified prosthetists/orthotists with extensive education, several having experience in children’s hospitals.

Our team is comprised of clinicians with Orthomerica AllStar Certifications. This certification requires extensive training and confirms that they are experienced experts! Our team is the ONLY group north of New York City with this certification. We love providing unique top-notch care to families in the Hudson Valley and beyond. We are thankful to be recognized as being experts in pediatrics.

See for yourself at starbandkids.com

Not every infant is indicated for a cranial remolding orthosis. We use researched clinical standards to guide treatments and recommendations. We only provide a cranial remolding orthosis if the infant meets the clinical standards and is truly indicated for treatment. We pride ourselves in using helmet therapy ONLY on those babies meeting the clinical standards.

Read more about our clinicians here: https://poaprosthetics.com/Pages/ClinicalTeam

Infants can develop flatness of their skull (plagiocephaly) due to various reasons, including being premature, a first pregnancy, small womb space, twins, muscle imbalances, or for other unknown reasons.

Our cranial team works on identifying the cause of the flatness and helps to provide solutions to resolve the plagiocephaly. Solutions can range from stretching exercises, physical therapy, repositioning the baby, and, if needed, a cranial remolding helmet.

We provide consultations for concerned families. During the consultation, several measurements will be taken. These measurements will be compared to the clinical standards.

We will teach you what the numbers indicate and explain goals for your infant. We will provide various recommendations on ways to improve the head shape. Our team will never pressure you into getting a helmet.

Our team’s primary focus is education and ensuring you feel comfortable with the process!

Most insurance companies view cranial remolding helmets as a covered benefit, and will cover the cost of the helmet. We participate with a majority of the insurance companies, including Medicaid plans.

Our administrative team excels at understanding the requirements of your individual insurance policy to see if cranial treatment is a covered benefit. Each insurance plan can have different requirements.

Our team will educate you on what those requirements are at the beginning of the process. We always request an insurance authorization to verify coverage. If for any reason the insurance company denies coverage, we offer financial planning for those situations. However, majority of insurances companies do consider it a medical necessity and will provide coverage.

Each helmet is custom fabricated to each infant. The helmet will provide a gentle static hold to the larger side of the skull and provide an empty place in helmet for the flat region to grow into. As the baby grows, we adjust the helmet to ensure optimal room for this growth.

Typically, we see infants back every 3-4 weeks. At these follow up appointments, we will measure their cranial shape again to assess how much progress has been made. We will also make any adjustments needed to the helmet.

Treatment typically ranges around 3-6 months. It is impacted by 4 major factors: compliance by the families and wearing it how they’re supposed to, age of the infant, how fast the infant is growing, and how severe the head shape is at the beginning of treatment.

At every follow up, we take new measurements to see how much longer the infant needs to wear the helmet. It is always a conversation between our cranial team and the families to determine what is best for the infant.

We gradually get the infant accustomed to wearing the helmet. By slowly having them wear it for a little bit at a time and gradually working their way up, we have an excellent success rate.

It is pretty surprising how well babies do with their helmets! They become very accustomed to wearing them fairly quickly, as long as you stay attentive to their other needs.

Yes! Our team is very comfortable treating infants with craniosynostosis. We work closely with the pediatric neurosurgeon and plastic surgeon to ensure optimal outcomes.

Learn more about craniosynostosis >>

Our team typically utilizes the StarBand helmet from Orthomerica. We have tried several different helmet designs and have found that the StarBand gives the most optimal outcomes. With the StarBand, we typically only need one helmet! Usually there is no need for multiple helmets with plagiocephaly. More helmets just cause more appointments and increase the cost! We appreciate being efficient!

Read more about the StarBand helmet >>

We love technology! We take a highly sophisticated topographical scan of the infant’s cranium to fabricate the helmet. There is NO radiation or risk to your infant. A camera simply takes a series of photos and videos, with a special cap on the baby’s head, to create a 3D image. This image will be used for fabricating the helmet, and gives our clinicians the most accurate measurements.

Watch a video of the scanning process >>

See transfer patterns as they are updated >>

Several families LOVE to decorate the helmet (we love it too!). There are many places online that sell fun decals to fancy up a helmet. One of the ones we see often is Bling your Band.

Below is a link to our customized instructional video which shows best practices and how to clean your baby's helmet. It's important to keep the helmet clean and your baby happy!