Ambulatory operations

The foot

According to statistics, about 50% of the adult population of Central Europe have painful or deformed feet or toes.
The main deformities are hallux valgus (bunions), hallux rigidus (pain and stiffness of the big toe), claw toe and hammertoe. A common complaint is metatarsalgia, which is the occurrence of foot pain without visible changes. A lot of these complaints can be treated with shoe inlays and relieved, not least, by changing e.g. footwear, living or eating habits and reducing weight. If, however, these measures do not result in long-term improvements, surgical pain management may be the only alternative. But a lot of patients are afraid of foot surgery; whether due to their own negative past experience or to accounts they have heard from others. This is understandable considering that legitimate methods of treatment in the past included ‘disfiguring operations’ such as removal of a joint and even amputation. The results were often unsatisfactory, both from their aesthetic as well as their functional aspect. Over the past years a number of entirely new operating techniques have been developed – particularly in the USA and France – that have a number of decisive advantages:

• stage-oriented surgery means that different types of surgery are available for different stages of the complaint, e.g. hallux valgus
• joint-conserving surgery is carried out wherever possible allowing even those patients determined to do sports to take them up with no restrictions
• an operation is performed in such a way as to allow the patient to put all their weight on the foot after only 1–2 weeks