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Surgery shouldn’t be your first course of action if you have a bunion. Instead, you might be able to get a large measure of relief with easier options, like changing to roomier footwear and icing the affected part of your foot.
That said, if your foot isn’t responding to other treatment — or if you’re cosmetically bothered by the bunion — William T. DeCarbo, DPM, FACFAS, might recommend surgery. That doesn’t mean the traditional path of spot-treating the bony bump by removing part of your bone, though.
Instead, Dr. DeCarbo offers a different approach to treating bunions: Lapiplasty®. This corrects the alignment of your toe from further down on your foot, driving you toward a better long-term outcome.
And that’s not the only benefit of Lapiplasty. This 3D approach to bunion correction also delivers a shorter recovery period. You could be back in sneakers in as few as six weeks. If you want to see if this leading-edge bunion correction is right for you, come visit our team at Greater Pittsburgh Foot & Ankle Center in Wexford, Pennsylvania.
The Lapiplasty difference
Traditional bunion surgery addresses the issue you can see: that bony bump on your toe. That approach has problems, though. The protruding bone isn’t actually the root cause of your bunion. Instead, the misalignment in your toe starts further down your foot.
Traditional bunion surgery (osteotomy) meant removing a part of your bone to correct the protrusion. It does nothing, however, to correct the misalignment at its source in your midfoot.
Lapiplasty is different. With this kind of surgery, Dr. DeCarbo uses patented titanium plates to secure the unstable joint in your midfoot. That brings your toe back into alignment without the need to remove any bone.
What’s more, Dr. DeCarbo performs Lapiplasty minimally invasively. That means he corrects the toe alignment through small incisions. This lessens your risk of complications like infections while further shortening your downtime.
What to expect during Lapiplasty recovery
The actual Lapiplasty procedure usually takes two hours or fewer.
You’ll need to be fully off your feet for at least a few days. Some people get into a walking boot within the first week. At the two-week mark, you should be able to put some weight on your foot.
By 4-6 weeks, most people return to light activity in their walking boot.
At the six-week mark, Dr. DeCarbo starts to explore transitioning you back into comfortable shoes like sneakers. Most people are out of their walking boot within eight weeks of Lapiplasty.
At 4–6 months, you should be back to all of your normal footwear and the activities you love. That said, make sure you don’t go back to shoes that squeeze your foot. Narrow and high-heeled shoes can put pressure back on the toe joint Dr. DeCarbo realigned.
With Lapiplasty, you can get back to walking comfortably faster. And you do so by treating the root cause of the bunion, not just the bump. To see how we can get you back in sneakers in as little as six weeks, call our office or book your appointment online today.