A General Practitioner (a ‘Medico Curante’ in Italian) must give you a medical referral for a physiatrist or geriatrician visit for a ‘medical device evaluation’.

The specialist you contact must be partnered with the Italian Health Service, therefore he or she must work for a public, not private, medical institute. The specialist must deem Opponent suitable for your condition and provide you with a prescription for either:

A) a ‘frontal approach, medial constraint orthosis’, or

B) an ‘orthosis to specifically counteract ankle instability due to foot paresis caused by central nervous system impairment’.

Specialists cannot prescribe specific brands, but instead must describe the type of orthosis that’s right for you. The orthopaedic shop will then offer you the various options that meet your needs, as noted in your prescription. The two options above (A and B) leave very few alternatives to Opponent.

Now head to the orthopaedic shop / medical device shop of your choice and show them the prescription. The shop manager may deem that the device best suited to your needs is not Opponent. Please have them contact us or to let us know if they want to be contacted by us: we will clear things up in a flash.

However, Opponent simply might not be the right AFO for you.

In any case, the outcome must be an estimate for you, consisting of the cost and delivery time for your medical device.

If Opponent is deemed to be suitable to your needs, the orthopaedic shop manager will need to contact us, sign the consent form and send it to us via Certified Email.

With the specialist’s prescription and the estimate from the orthopaedic shop, you will then need to go to the Prosthetic and Medical Devices Office of your local ASL office and get their ‘authorization to buy’.

In Italy, the ASL office must decide within 20 days, after which the request will be considered accepted.

Once you have gotten the prescription and the authorization of the ASL, you can request the medical device provider to proceed with the provision of Opponent. Make sure the orthopaedic shop intends to provide you with Opponent, not another AFO. Opponent will be shipped to the orthopaedic shop by courier.

Once paid, VivacSo will ship Opponent.

The shop employees will need to adapt Opponent to your foot. There are rules to follow, an instruction booklet, and YouTube tutorials that help this step go smoothly: wearing Opponent from morning to evening cannot and should not be a nuisance.

WARNING! From the moment the orthopaedic shop irreversibly modifies Opponent, it can no longer be returned to VivacSo.

We will advise the professional to have you try it on initially without irreversibly modifying it, and to contact us by telephone if in doubt.

Once Opponent has been worn for a few days, it is necessary to return to the specialist doctor who prescribed the orthosis to certify the benefits obtained.