Surgery to remove bunions shouldn’t be done purely for aesthetic reasons. Patients who struggle to wear shoes or who have pain in their daily lives despite wearing wider, more comfortable shoes are performed on this procedure.

You might be a candidate for surgical bunion correction if you’ve tried wearing wider shoes, padding, toe spacers, or other treatments but still have pain that limits your activity.

A metatarsal osteotomy or bunionectomy is the corrective procedure for a bunion. To straighten the great toe and lessen the bump on the side of the foot, many procedures are used, but they all require removing the bones and relocating them with metal screws.

Bunion surgery has a reputation for being extremely painful and requiring a long recovery. However, certain patients may profit from the significant benefits of more recent, minimally invasive procedures. Traditionally, these surgeries have been carried out through big incisions, but at HSS, I have developed two unique methods to treat bunions with relatively minor incisions.

Wearing only wide-toed and/or soft shoes, utilizing “bunion pads” or toe spacers, and using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen, are all examples of conservative, nonsurgical treatment for bunions.

Toe spacers and other tools that keep the great toe separated from the second toe may ease pain, but they cannot remove a bunion. Without undergoing surgery, the toe alignment won’t improve over time.