Minimally Invasive Surgery – What is It?

One of the main podiatry services that our podiatrist, Sheldon Nadal, DPM, offers is minimally invasive foot surgery. These foot procedures can be performed through  very  small  openings in order to correct many painful foot conditions and diseases, including hammertoes, bunions, painful calluses, stiff big toe, diabetic foot ulcerations, warts, heel pain, and much more. In addition, minimally invasive foot surgery is an outpatient procedure, which means a patient can go home the same day.

What IS Minimally Invasive Foot Surgery?

First pioneered in by Dr. Morton Polokoff, this technique was developed as a system of sub dermal surgery with the use of very small instruments. In the decades that followed since then, further surgical advancements led to the current state-of-art procedures, making this technique much safer and more comfortable for the patients.

This type of foot surgery is done with a very small incision that requires little to no stitching. Through these incisions, podiatrists insert specially designed instruments in order to perform the operation. Interventions are also carried out through the same small incisions, and you can expect to have minimal exposure to the surgical field. This translates to  reduced trauma to the adjacent tissue. Minimally invasive surgery lets podiatrists  reduce a patient’s  postoperative pain and swelling and may get them back to normal activities quicker.

Note that these foot surgeries should only be performed only by trained practioners because they acquire these specialized  skills  with continuing education, extensive training, seminars, and fellowship within the minimally invasive foot surgery community.

What are the Benefits of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS)?

These surgeries provide many benefits such as:

*Less Injury – With MIS, there is less injury to the soft tissues compared to traditional open surgeries where long incisions are made. MIS uses much smaller incisions that disturb less tissue and lead to a quicker recovery time.

*Less Pain -   In many cases, patients of MIS report less pain than those patients who underwent traditional surgeries. As a result, the patients of MIS require less use of pain relievers.

*Shorter Surgery Time – Since there is an extremely small incision, surgery times for MIS procedures  may be shorter than traditional ones.

*Less anesthesia, more qualified patients – Due to the nature of MIS procedures, patients often remain awake during the surgery and after careful local anesthesia is applied to the foot area. This reduces the use of general anesthesia.

*Less scarring – As a result of MIS procedures’ smaller incisions, scars that are left by these procedures are also smaller and less noticeable.

If you are interested in knowing more about minimally invasive foot surgeries, setup an appointment with Sheldon H. Nadal, DPM today!