A bunion is a bony lump at the base of your big toe. This bump develops slowly over the years as pressure from shoes, standing, and walking gradually pushes the joints in your big toe out of alignment.
Bunions make your toe joint swollen, stiff, and painful. It’s one of the most common foot deformities and affects as many as one in three American adults. Unfortunately, treatment options are limited.
Medication and bunion padding just cover up your symptoms. Traditional bunion surgery involves shaving off the bony growth to change the shape of your foot — but it requires long recovery times and doesn’t address the true source of the problem.
Lapiplasty® offers a better solution. Aaron Chokan, DPM, FACFAS, FACCWS, and Jon Moss, DPM, AACFAS, specialize in this breakthrough bunion surgery at Ohio Foot and Ankle Center.
Lapiplasty takes a 3D approach to bunion correction for better results and faster recovery times. So if you’re dreading the thought of bunion surgery, it’s time to learn more about your options.
Your bunion is a visible lump on the outside of your big toe. It may be irritated, swollen, and painful — but what causes that bump is more than just the bony part you see.
Over time, pressure on your feet pushes your big toe toward your other toes. The joints of your big toe start bending, and eventually, the position of the bones, tendons, and ligaments permanently change, and you have a painful bunion.
For many people, the problem isn’t just ill-fitting footwear. An unstable joint in the middle of your foot (your MTP joint) is often the cause of this gradual shift. You may not feel pain in the middle of your foot, but the instability causes the bunion to grow outside your big toe.
Unfortunately, bunions don’t heal independently, and they often worsen with time. Conservative care, like mediation, orthotics, and padding, can be effective for small bunions. But for larger bunions, surgery offers longer-lasting relief.
In traditional bunion surgery, your surgeon removes the enlarged bone at the base of your toe and realigns the bones and soft tissues in your toe joint. This is the most common type of bunion surgery, but for 87% of people with bunions, it doesn’t address the true source of the issue.
Lapiplasty takes a different approach. Our foot surgeons use this technique to address your bunion in three dimensions and reinforce the joint at the root of the problem for better surgical outcomes than traditional methods.
Lapiplasty corrects the sideways misalignment of your toe joints and the upward lift that’s common in big toes affected by bunions. It also corrects misalignment of the bones in all the joints of your big toe.
During surgery, we secure two small titanium plates to the unstable joint in the middle of your foot. The plates add strength to the joint, dramatically reducing your chances of developing another bunion after surgery.
Lapiplasty also offers shorter recovery times than traditional bunion surgery. You don’t need to wear a cast, and most people can bear weight on their feet and use a walking boot within days after surgery.
Is Lapiplasty the bunion solution you’ve been looking for? Schedule a bunion consultation with our team at Ohio Foot and Ankle Center to find out.
