If you’ve noticed a bend in your toes that won’t go away, you may have hammertoes.
Your toes may be working extra hard to compensate for imbalance causing you to grip the ground as you walk. Over time the toes become contracted. Hammertoe can be a general term. A true hammertoe has a bend at the middle joint of the toe. If the bend appears in the joint near your toenail, we call this a mallet toe. This condition can occur with any of your toes, most commonly is the second toe, the toe next to the big toe. The third toe, also known as the middle toe will often have a painful callus at the tip of the toe.
Conservative Treatment
There are several conservative treatment options to relieve painful hammertoes:
Wider shoes with a deep toe box that has a Lycra toe box that stretches.
Hammertoe splints which are silicone sleeves that protect corns at the joint.
Two of our favorite products:
Feltastic Hammer Toe Cushion
Visco 5- ToeBuddy
The cushion can be worn with socks and shoes. We recommend wearing the silicone ToeBuddy in the evening for an hour. We think of it as a reset for your toes. We recommend conservative treatment before considering surgical procedures.
Pain Relief for Hammertoes
If conservative measures fail to alleviate pain, Dr. Kurlanski offers an in-office minimally invasive procedure, a percutaneous flexor tenotomy. This is one of Dr. Kurlanski's favorite procedures because the results are immediate. If you have an ulcer or callus on the end of the toe it usually resolves in 1-2 weeks. We numb the toe with a local anesthetic and this 5 minute procedure is painless. We dress the procedure site with a light bandage and have you wear a post op shoe until your next appointment. Best of all, because we do not send you to the operating room, you don’t have to worry about serious complications.
Your results are dramatic: the toe that once only partially touched the ground, will now be straighter with less pressure to the end of the toe and will no longer bump the top of the shoe. After this procedure, your toe will still have a soft bend when sitting. However, after the flexor tenotomy, the toe will flatten when you stand on it. You may notice the toes next to it are contracted. We may need to do the same procedure on the contracted toes in the future.
If you or someone you know has pain in their feet or ankles Dr. Michele Kurlanski is here to help. Call us today at (207) 774-0028 to schedule your next appointment at our location in Scarborough, Maine!
