I'm going to talk to you today about Tailor's Bunions. Another name for it is bunionette or little bunionette.
What Is A Tailor's Bunion?
The Tailor's Bunion is a bump in the bone or the bump in your foot. To show you where that is, take a look at the screen capture of my video on the right. There you'll see the fifth metatarsal bone. It connects to the mid foot and back of the foot and it connects to the toe. The lateral or the outside of your foot is by your little baby toe. On the right side is where you see, the bump. This is where it can be
At first you might think there's an enlarged bone on the right side and that might be true to some extent, but typically the amount of bone that's enlarged is pretty little for the size bump you see sticking out. So, what we have to look at is inside of the foot, that's done with an x-ray. And there we find two bones that have spread apart. And the more these bones spread, the more pronounced the bone becomes on the outside of your foot. And the more it hurts.
What Causes Tailor's Bunions?
What causes the bump to stick out? Well oftentimes the foot is unstable in the front and that is often associated with a severe highed arch foot and more commonly, a very flexible foot that collapses too much. When your foot collapses too much it spreads out. This causes the foot to be wider in the front and the bone presses on the outside of the shoe. The pain can be present on the outside or slightly on the bottom, in the same region.
How Are Tailor's Bunions Treated?
So what do we do with a Tailor's bunion? First of all, conservative measures. Certainly they can be tried and include getting the pressure off the outside of the foot.
These include:
- Using pads that have a cutout in them to alleviate the pressure on the side of the foot.
- Stretching out the front of the shoe.
- Getting a wider shoe in the toe box. An example of an athletic shoe that has a wide toe box is Altra, A-L-T-R-A also has minimal to no heel in the back so you press on the front less.
- Treating any mechanical instability in the foot such as the flexible flatfoot through the use of prescriptive orthotics.
After the conservative measures have been exhausted and pain persists, we may need to consider surgery. Since the problem is often a separation between bones, then surgery needs to bring this bone back in alignment. So if you're suffering from pain, associated with Tailor's bunion, come in, first step is to get some x-rays, examine the feet and we'll help you design the best program to get you back on your feet.
