Bunion Correction Surgery - 10 Years on
How 73 bunion corrections fared 10 years on from the operation.

Bunion surgery has a poor reputation: Even a Professor of Orthopaedics at Dundee University commented that whatever the operation 10% of patients seemed to be made worse.
It is commonly believed that the operation has only a temporary effect and eventually the problem comes back.

To analyse this perception, Foot Surgery Services recalled all those patients who underwent a rotation Scarf and Akin operation to correct their bunions in the years 1996 to 1998.

• 101 patients were contacted
• 50 female patients agreed to return for review.
• 73 operations to assess. (As this group included some patients who had undergone surgery on both feet)

Patient satisfaction

The patients were asked if they were completely satisfied, satisfied with reservation or dissatisfied with the outcome of their operation:

• 88% were completely satisfied
• 8% satisfied with reservations
• 4% dissatisfied

The reason for dissatisfaction was that 3 patients felt their big toe was too straight.

10 years after bunion surgery. This patient has undergone bunion surgery on both feet and is completely happy with the result.
Footwear choice. 86% of the patients could wear any shoe they wished and had no restrictions with high heels or fashion shoes.  Did the bunions come back? In 6 feet there was some recurrence, it was not as bad as the original problem and no patient felt it was bad enough to warrant a further operation.

	This is an example of some return of the bunion 10 years after surgery.  Both feet were operated on but there has been some recurrence on the left foot.
Infection Three people developed a post-op wound infection that was treated with standard  antibiotics taken in tablet form.