cartilage replacement for bunions cartilage replacement for bunions

Pain in the big toe joint can be debilitating, especially if you are a woman who wants to wear high heels. What causes this pain and what can be done. Today we will discuss cartilage replacement surgery for bunions. Many times when one has pain in the big toe joint they think its a bunion. While most of the time that is true there are many other things it could be , such as gout or and infection. Even if its a bunion there are different types of bunions one type is called hallux limitus or hallux rigidus. This is very different than a bunion because here the toe is stiff and does not move. If that happens then you can not get into shoes that require you to bend your toe, such as high heels. Thanks to new technologies there is a way to perform cartilage replacement for bunions where we replace your diseased dead cartilage with new cartilage. utilizing a grafting technique and mixing it with PRP- platelet rich plasma, one can get their big toe back moving again. How does cartilage replacement surgery for bunions work? As you can see from the pictures below from one of my surgeries performed on one of my patients. The joint is exposed and the cartilage is cleaned up to healthy cartilage. Once that is complete drill holes are used to stimulate bleeding at the bed of the bone to bring in cartilage progenitor cells. next using a specialized grafting system along with the patients PRP  platelet rich plasma the new cartilage is placed down on the joint. the joint is held open for four to six weeks utilizing a concept called  arthrodiastasis .

We have many patients that have had this procedure here at the advanced foot and ankle center of San Diego that have had this procedure and have gone back to wearing high heels and running and all types of exercises pain free.