How Many Ways Can You Cut a Foot?

 The podiatrist is recommending surgery. A neurectomy to be precise.

So. I'm having surgery. I know it's relatively minor surgery, but I'm not thrilled about it.

The treatment options for Morton's Neuroma run something like this...

A variety of injections and ablations.

Then surgery of which there are two approaches--decompression or neurectomy.

The injections can work but don't work for most, and thus, aren't preferred. So there goes all my previous excitement about maybe avoiding surgery.

Decompression surgery is the sole provenance of private podiatry practices and their marketing outreach. How do I know this? Well, there apparently isn't much to say about Morton's Neuromas in the medical literature which means search results are 90% sites for private clinics.

Private clinics where the doctor always seems to be an exceptional genius who invented a decompression procedure to treat Morton's Neuroma.

After like, the fifth site where the podiatrist had this whole spiel about how they invented a new technique and are the only ones who can save you with nary a mention of failure rates*, I was like...okay, this is bullshit. (See also: All the previous times I've talked about how surgeons will say anything to get you into surgery.)

Did they all hire the same marketing firm or something? How is this peacockery allowed by the state medical boards? Can you just claim to invent a procedure like that? OR are there that many super special ways to cut out a neuroma? 

100 Ways to Slice a Foot, Invent a Procedure, and Increase Podiatry Clinic Profits--some conference workshop somewhere.

Even more insidious, some of these geniuses start patient communities where they can shill their patented surgical miracles. There's a whole marketing machine that overtly manipulates patients.

But if decompression surgery for Morton's Neuroma is the second coming of Christ the private podiatrists say it is, mainstream hospital system medicine has yet to convert. 

Mainstream medicine cuts out the nerve and that's the only option on the menu I've been provided.

Either way, the procedures work about the same from what I can tell. So surgery here I come. Bah.

*For those looking for an ethical podiatrist...if their website mentions failure rates, if they talk about decompression surgery being an option in a specific use case (earlier in the development of symptoms) instead of trying to sell it 100% of the time, and don't claim to have invented the 5,000th special procedure for Morton's Neuroma, which is a condition so boring and unexciting that there aren't even 5,000 medical studies on it (this isn't cancer)...probably they are good egg. At they very least they're more up front than 90% of their private practice peers.