Featuring Dr. Alastair Younger, MB, Ch.B, M.Sc, Ch.M, F.R.C.S.(C), Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Surgeon

Duration: 2 minutes, 39 seconds

Video Title: How an Orthopaedic Surgeon Can Help You With Foot Pain and Bunions

Forefoot pain can happen after you have an injury or because of problems that you grew up with, essentially, what you inherited through your genes.

One of the ones that are often talked about is a bunion, which is a bump next to your big toe that gradually gets bigger in time. While everyone notices the bump, the deformity you have actually starts in the bone surrounding the foot, and as a result, it’s unlikely to get better if the bones remain out of place.

However, bunions are common and many of them don’t need any surgery. Because there’s a bump there and it irritates some shoes. The way to get around this is to make sure that you get good shoe advice to make sure that shoes that might irritate it – you don’t buy, and you can make sure, hopefully, they can remain fashionable and also remain pain free.

So as you get older, your foot can deteriorate and it can get more deformed. When you get a bunion this bone here goes out of place and twists off to the side. This bone here deforms and the bump that’s seen is this part of the bone pushing up against the skin.

When you get clotters these joints here – they're quite far down in your foot – dislocate and then you can get other deformities where these joints here get tight and end up bending so that you can't straighten them again.

These can be accommodated in your shoes, but on occasion, the shoe wear modifications are no longer able to keep up with the deformity so the foot needs to be straightened out.

The key to getting rid of a large bunion or protuberance of this bone is to make sure that it’s shorted its space, either by cutting the bone here, or by taking out this joint here and making sure that it heals with the foot straight.

Because the joints have got deformed in time they end up being tight on this side and loose on this side. And when the joint is corrected in its position the surgeon will need to release this side of the joint and tighten it up on this side so that your foot goes straight and stays straight.

So there’s a number of ways that bunions can hurt and that surgery can help you if you fail to resolve your discomfort with other things such as shoes and inserts. These are best coordinated through your family doctor or another practitioner, but if things deteriorate then you might consider asking for a referral to an orthopedic surgeon so that your foot can be addressed to see if surgery would be beneficial for you.

Presenter: Dr. Alastair Younger, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Orthopaedic Surgeon