Dr. Leo Krawetz of Healthy Feet Podiatry in Tampa and Brooksville relieves heel pain in the office by surgically cutting the plantar fascia.
I’m Dr. Leo Krawetz of Healthy Feet Podiatry.
I’ve got a patient today who has chronic plantar fasciitis, which is inflammation of this ligament on the bottom of her foot and it’s a real tight ligament. She’s had several cortisone injections, which did not help her. She has had orthotics, which have not been helpful. So today, I’m gonna do a plantar fasciotomy, which is cutting of this plantar fascia on the bottom of the foot. I’m gonna do just a stab incision and cut the medial band of the plantar fascia, which is this band that supports the arch. So first, I’m gonna make sure she is numb and give her a shot right in the area where I’m gonna do the small stab incision and this is just local anesthetic, lidocaine, and Marcaine, and she’s already had a partial nerve block that was given in her ankle and that numbed the bottom of the foot. Now, I’m gonna do a stab incision on the bottom of the foot over the plantar fascia and just cut the band of the plantar fascia and you can see it’s a real tight band right there, so I’m gonna go in the same area that I went and gave her the injection to numb her up and I’m using a very small blade here and I’ll be able to feel it release as I cut through the plantar fascia and it’s releasing right now as I cut through and I can feel it released.
Are you having any pain up there?
And it’s almost complete. I can feel all the way through and the great thing about this procedure is because it’s a stab incision, it will heal very quickly and she’ll be walking on it when she leaves the office today with her orthotics on. She’ll remove the dressing in 3 days and at that point, she’ll just put Neosporin and a Band-Aid over the area. So you can there is some bleeding because there is muscle underneath that area, but when I bend the toe, you can see that the plantar fascia is released. So you can see it’s a very simple procedure and now there’s not much bleeding. The bleeding stops pretty quickly. I’ll put a Steri-Strip across here, which is just basically a paper stitch, and she’ll be able to remove that in 3 days. She’ll be walking in her normal shoes and be back to activities in probably three to four weeks including running or any type of other activities. She’ll follow up with me in 1 week.