Minimally invasive surgery for bunions

A bunion is a foot deformity. It is a swelling at the base of the big toe, which is positioned on the side of the toe. The bunion is an anomaly that pushes the toe towards the second toe and it can affect the appearance of the whole foot. In many cases the bunions are very painful. It is more common in females and the statistics show that around one third of women will suffer from the bunions.

Treatment for the bunions may include painkillers, bunion pads or surgery. In the past, the bunion surgery was very painful and it took a long time for the patients to recover. Those surgeries included bone cutting without fixing it and the incision on the skin was up to 2 inches. A wire was put inside the foot to hold the bones and it remained in the foot. Nowadays, new techniques offer proper bone fixation, pain reducement and quicker recovery period. The bunion surgery is done by making small punctuations which leave just a tiny scar. A reduced amount of tissue and skin is damaged and therefore the chances of infection are drastically decreased.

These minimally invasive techniques were developed by the European surgeons in order to improve the methods and make the healing process shorter. The surgery is done with small holes, the use of wires is limited, surgical instruments are sophisticated, similar to those used for face surgery. There are four punctuations in the area of the big toe, which are made to separate the ligaments. This way the deformity can be fixed without harming the surrounding tissue. The wire is used put the bones of the toe in their proper place and when the position is fixed a tiny screw is placed to hold the bones together. After this is done the wire is removed from the foot. The screw does not cause any pain to the patient. The whole surgery takes about a half an hour and the patient receives the total anesthetics.

The recovery time is reduced a lot due to the limited use of the wire. According to older methods, it took the patient who had the bunion surgery more then four weeks to recover. For the same reason, possible complications and infections are also lessened. These new techniques have considerable influence on foot surgery due to their benefits for the patients and effectiveness.The bunion surgery is performed by an orthopedic surgeon.