Bobby Ndu, MD will discuss new technique that is revolutionizing foot and angle reconstructive surgery. These surgeries used to require large formal incisions and with these new techniques we are able to reduce incisions down to the size of a keyhole. Ndu, MD, discusses these new techniques and the positive impact they will have for patients; this can mean smaller incisions, less soft tissue dissection, less scarring, less pain and swelling, and a faster return to activities.
In this segment of his presentation he discusses hammer toe.
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There's a new technique that's revolutionizing foot and ankle reconstructive surgery. Today, I'm going to show you how we're using it to help our patients here at Penn Medicine. Hi, I'm Dr Bobby undo, an orthopedic surgeon at Penn Medicine. And I want to share with you some of the new and exciting advancements in minimally invasive foot and ankle surgery. These techniques have allowed us to take procedures that used to require large formal incisions and their subsequent dissections down to being done using incisions, the size of a keyhole, using a smaller incision means that there is significantly less soft tissue dissection, which means less scarring, less pain and swelling and often a faster recovery with an easier return to activity for our patients. But like any kind of surgery, minimally invasive surgical techniques still carry risks such as bleeding, infection or damage to adjacent anatomy to name a few. Let's take a look at one of the procedures you may have heard about a minimally invasive hammer toe correction. Now, you can see that we have already made our keyhole incision and now we're passing our instrument in because we're already down to bone and our dissection is complete. We enter the bone with a low speed high torque burr that allows us to then start cutting and removing bone to straighten the toe. And then here we can see that we have now removed a section of bone that is allowing us to now straighten the toe with our toes straightened. We then place a pin from the tip of the toe down to the base to allow us to maintain the straightened position that we were able to achieve. We verify with X ray that the pin is in good position and holding the toe as we would like, we will then typically cut and bend the pin to ensure that it does not catch on any clothes or other items. And that completes the procedure for the hammer toe correction. Now we'll see what a hammer toe correction looks like when done in an open fashion. And we can see the dissection being done here across the top of the toe that will require us to move the tendon that moves the toe so that we have access to the bone and joint. This extensive dissection is one of the reasons that a known problem from hammer toe surgery is residual stiffness because of how much the soft tissues have to be moved to gain access to this small joint and the bones underneath. And so here we can see our open incision next to our minimally invasive incision to appreciate the significant difference in the amount of dissection and soft tissue mobilization required. With the minimally invasive incision being so small and so much faster and typically smoother recovery for our patients giving them the best possible outcome with the least amount of effort. My colleagues and I here at Penn Medicine are constantly working to provide the latest surgical techniques to help our patients get back on their feet to contact us about surgical options for your patient or to refer your patient to pen orthopedics. Call our dedicated referral line or visit Penn medicine dot org slash refer.
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