Bunion Blues? How to Know When to Consider Bunion Surgery

Bunions may start as a minor annoyance, but they can quickly become severe enough to disrupt your daily life. When those bunion blues strike, you might start thinking about surgery and wondering whether it’s time to book a consultation. At Utah Orthopaedics in Ogden, UT, our skilled bunion specialists help thousands of patients struggling with the same symptoms as you. If you’ve tried different ways to relieve your bunion pain without success, it could be time to take the next step. Here’s how to tell when it’s time.

When Conservative Treatments Aren’t Enough

For small bunions that don’t yet cause serious symptoms, conservative treatments are often the first line of defense. Some of the methods we usually prescribe are:

• Over-the-counter medication: Pain relievers or anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs) to reduce pain and swelling
• Footwear changes: Roomy, low-heeled shoes to ease pressure
• Ice packs: Reduce inflammation
• Custom orthotics: Shoe inserts to help correct foot alignment and reduce pressure on your bunion joint
• Physical therapy: PT to strengthen foot muscles and improve foot alignment

These conservative methods can be very helpful in preventing bunion progression and relieving symptoms. However, they can’t reverse the bunion. So, if you have severe bunion symptoms and struggle to walk, stand, or wear your favorite shoes, it might be time to talk about surgery with our specialists.

Understanding Bunion Surgery

Bunion surgery corrects bunions by removing the bony bump on your big toe joint (the metatarsophalangeal or MTP joint). Bunions often represent more than just an MTP joint problem: They may be related to bone shifting that starts in the middle part of the foot. To achieve a long-lasting bunion correction, our surgeons address the problem starting from its foundation and correct any complications the bunion causes in your foot, such as loose ligaments. Some of the different aspects of bunion surgery may include:

• Removing the excess bone on your MTP joint
• Realigning ligaments connected to your MTP joint
• Repositioning bones in the midfoot
• Fusing (permanently connecting) the MTP to the bone beneath it using hardware
• Replacing part or all of your big toe joint with a prosthetic

After bunion surgery, it usually takes six weeks to several months to recover fully. We provide comprehensive support throughout your procedure and recovery to help you get back to walking without pain as soon as possible and enjoy a good quality of life for the long term.

Is Bunion Surgery Right for You?

Bunion surgery is a big decision, and you deserve to go into it with all the necessary information. We hope this blog helped with that, and we’re glad to discuss surgery further in a consultation in our Ogden, UT office. Call us at 801-917-8000 or reach out online today.