What is a bunion treatment? Is it easy to decide what bunion treatment would be suitable for me? Do I have any other alternatives other than surgery? These are the common questions asked by many patients suffering from bunions.
However, like many other diseases, there are factors that will determine which treatment would best suit you.
Not all people need surgery but there are also people who have no other option but surgery.
The focus of this article is to discuss the different elements that may affect your bunion treatment and determine which procedure to use.
The first element is your foot deformity itself.
There are deformities that don't really affect shoe fitting and are not exactly too obvious.
Small lumps near the toe isn't really uncommon to some people, therefore your bunion can still pass as a normal foot.
The problem comes when the deformity becomes quite bigger.
Deformity means the misalignment of your foot.
As soon as the misalignment compromise walking and impedes blood flow towards the toe, this may cause a serious problem and surgery may be your only alternative.
Second is the severity of the bunion.
With this, i mean both the severity of the pain and the size of the bunion.
There are patients who may endure the pain, but most of them hate the feeling of not being able to fit into any shoes because of the size of their bunion.
At this rate, surgery may be advisable unless your doctor believes that it is manageable to reduce the bunion size via the non-surgical methods.
Your age may have great impact on the type of bunion treatment for you.
This is highly associated with existing health problems caused by age.
Generally, many doctors will not perform the surgery if the patient has arthritis or other existing bone problems.
A fragile bone is a big no-no to surgery, especially if the patient chooses tightrope surgery.
Your doctor may recommend another alternative which is more in non-surgical procedures thus, lesser recovery time.
However, this doesn't pose too many risks.
Another factor is the doctor itself.
There are doctors who may not be too familiar with bunion surgeries in general so you may need a foot specialist if you really opt for surgery.
Also, not all podiatrists will recommend surgery or will not recommend it.
Even when you choose not to go into surgery, but your bunion is already too severe, your surgeon may explain more of why surgery is very important.