If you’re dealing with foot pain and it’s been bothering you for some time now, you may be wondering if surgery is your best option. In some cases, it might be. In others, surgery may be the last route you want to pursue. Regardless of which option turns out to be true for you, we’ve found that patients who seek out a consultation from a doctor who doesn’t rush to surgery often find more satisfaction with their care. Below, we explain why you should try to find a foot specialist who has a conservative approach towards foot or ankle surgery.
Conservative Treatment Is Often Successful
Outside of severe trauma, many foot injuries have great healing success with conservative care techniques. Now, it depends on your condition, but for conditions like recurrent ankle sprains, bunions, hammertoes, flat feet, heel spurs or plantar fasciitis, oftentimes the injuries respond well to active conservative treatments like physical therapy or gentle stretching. Why go through the pain of an operation when you can achieve the same results through conserative methods?
Keeps Costs Down
A surgeon that is quick to recommend surgery may be looking out for their bottom line more than yours. Sure, surgery might provide a fix, but if the same solution can be achieved with a little more time dedicated to conservative methods, the surgeon shouldn’t be jumping to the more expensive option for the patient.
Surgery Is A Major Trauma
A minimally invasive operation is a significant trauma on your body, much more so than any conservative technique. Even when things go as planned, you’ll still have some post-op pain and plenty of rehabilitation exercises. The surgery alone doesn’t make everything go away, you still need to deal with pain and put in the work. Because of this, people often prefer a conservative approach when possible.
Surgical Complications
Surgery often brings about some potential complications that aren’t present with conservative techniques. For example, there is no risk of nerve damage or excessive bleeding from a conservative approach, but they are a possibility during an operation. Surgeons work hard to control these risks, but since they aren’t one hundred percent preventable, know that an operation carries some higher risks than a conservative approach.