These things can be so painful! One of my favourite procedures to carry out is the excision of the interdigital corn. As surgery goes, they are quite simple to do and produce great results with minimal recovery time.
These corns are caused by the skin in the webbing being compressed by the underlying bones.
Simple trimming/enucleating can produce good results; however, some become so deep or develop infections that treatment can become arduous and may not provide the relief you would like.
There is a surgical procedure available for these that simply involves excising the corn via an ellipse of skin. By doing this, I advance the webbing to allow the bones entrapping the skin to be back under the skin. I have seen quite a few of these recently hence this post.
It can be done under local anaesthetic or sedation with local anaesthetic and involves a single buried, deep subcutaneous running suture that has a knot dorsally and one plantarly. A dressing is applied and changed at 5 to 7 days, and the suture knots are trimmed at about 10 to 14 days, with the suture being absorbable (dissolvable).
At this stage, I will get the patient to run some betadine interdigitally until the scab comes away, and that is usually it.
As I said, it is one of my favourite procedures as it is relatively quick and simple for me to do and typically produces complete eradication of the problem.
If you have any specific questions or would like to discuss similar cases, feel free to contact me.
Also read:
Interdigital ulcer success
Heloma molle/soft corn
Interdigital corn
(This content is intended for healthcare professionals only)