More than a third of Australians are suffering right now from bunions, one of the most common—but most painful and unsightly—afflictions treated by foot doctors. A bunion is a bony swelling on the base joint of the big toe, which causes arthritis and shifts the big toe inwards and towards the second toe over time.
Shorter surgery time
There are risks in any surgery, including those from the general anaesthetic used to put the patient to sleep. The surgeries themselves also have their own inherent risks, and generally, the longer the surgery, the more risk to the patient.
There is also more pain with more extensive surgeries, because more work must be done to access the part of the body that needs to be repaired—which is why keyhole surgery was developed.
Minimally invasive bunion surgery uses keyhole access—just a 5-10mm incision in the foot instead of the extensive opening of traditional surgery—to access and repair the bone joint.
The technique involves much less soft tissue and bone dissection, which means shorter surgery time, and less risk for the patient.
Less pain
Bunion surgery used to mean a lot of pain. Patients would suffer from their wound site, which was large and deep and took a long time to heal.
They also suffered a lot of pain which prevented them from using their affected foot at all for some time, and reduced their mobility when they were finally able to weight bear on it again—which in turn caused pain to the knees and back.
Minimally invasive foot surgery involves a lot less surgical damage, which means a lot less inflammation and pain. Patients can go home sooner, and can walk on their foot sooner, which prevents pain in the rest of the body from compensating for the foot.
Patients also need significantly less pain relief over their recovery, which reduces the risks of using pain medication.
Cosmetic benefits
Traditional bunion surgery leaves large, unsightly scarring on the foot. Because the surgery involves extensive dissection of tissue and bone, there is usually a significant amount of scar tissue build up that affects the appearance of the foot and contributes to pain over the long term.
Keyhole bunion surgery results in a very small scar, only a few millimetres long. Because the surgical incision is so small, there is less opportunity for irregular or deforming tissue to accumulate as it heals, so the scarring is usually barely noticeable and can even fade over time.
As long as there are no complications or individual factors influencing the procedure, minimally invasive bunion surgery only improves the cosmetic appearance of the feet.
Better long-term outcomes
The chances of the bunion growing back after keyhole surgery are also lower than for traditional surgery. It’s likely that as more orthopaedic surgeons train in minimally invasive surgery techniques, they’ll become the gold standard for bunion treatment, as they have for other surgeries like appendectomies.
Until then, if you’re considering this new treatment option, it’s important to choose a skilled and experienced orthopaedic surgeon.
