3D Bunion Corrections

3D Bunion corrections are a hot topic in the medical community, daily talk shows/ new stations and now are also being marketed directly to patients by medical device companies. Today I present to you one such case that I recently operated upon.

Ms. X is a young female in her mid-20s with a moderately severe bunion deformity. That has progressively gotten worse over the last 7 years. She exhausted conservative treatment options and came to me for a surgical opinion.
X-rays showed a moderately increased IM angle with a frontal plane deviation of the sesamoid apparatus. These findings are commonly encountered in symptomatic patients.

The exam showed a painful bunion and a “hypermobile” first ray. Hypermobility of the first ray is encountered at the tarsometatarsal joint and any procedure without addressing this will cause recurrence of the bunion.

I performed a Lapidus procedure on her which fuses the tarsometatarsal joint eliminating the hypermobility and also allows me to correct the 3D bunion deformity (tri-planar). These are immediate pre and post-procedure comparison pictures and X-Rays. Post-operative X-Rays are non-weight-bearing images.