MiniBunion Surgery

What happens in Surgery?

The anesthesiologist will put patients completely asleep or patients can be awake with an anesthetic applied to the nerves in the leg to prevent any pain during the surgery. Next, a sterile cover will be placed over the patient, but the leg will be exposed and thoroughly washed with a sterile surgical washing solution.

A small incision, generally ½ inch – 1 inch, is made on the side of the foot. The bone is realigned in all 3 dimensions with surgical instruments and the miniBunion™ implant is attached to the bone to hold the bone in the proper 3D alignment. The incision is then closed with suture.

Although the miniBunion™ technique is minimally-invasive, it still involves the risks of a standard surgical procedure.

Surgical Options

There are several other more-invasive, traditional options for bunion correction, that are not our minimally invasive bunion surgery.

Chevron (or Austin Procedure)

This procedure generally involves a 2 or 3 inch incision and quite a bit of soft-tissue dissection to allow the surgeon to visualize the bone to make bone resections. In this procedure, the lower end of the metatarsal (longest bone of the big toe) is separated from the shaft of the bone by making a chevron (v-shaped) resection with a surgical saw. The tip of the metatarsal is then shifted to a better position to reduce the bunion. A surgical plate or screws is then used to reattach the tip of the bone to the metatarsal and keep it in the new alignment.

This procedure generally requires a longer incision than the miniBunion™. In foot surgery, minimally-invasive procedures with smaller incisions have resulted in less infections. Additionally, recovery after traditional bunion surgery requires about six to eight weeks of rehabilitation.