Post Surgical Care - Foot

After your foot surgery, the operative wound will be wrapped with bulky sterile gauzes, and a thin layer of coban or an elastic ace wrap. You will need to keep the wound dressing dry. There are many way to keep the foot dry: take a bath and keep the affected foot dry, cover with a trash bag and apply duct tapes around the oppening.

During the preop visit, I will let you know whether you can put weight on the foot or not because this is depending on what type of surgery that you have.

You should try to keep elevate the foot above your heart level and applying ice pack to the foot three times per day at 15 minutes each. This will help reducing the swelling.

Take your prescribed pain medication as soon as you arrived home. I normally prescribed either Vicodin or Darvocet N100 for postoperative pain. Take 1 to 2 tablets of Vicodin or Darvocet every 4-6 hours (be sure not to exceed 8 per days) for the first two days then only as needed. You can also take Motrin 800mg three times per day together with the Vicodin or Darvocet for synergistic effects to reduce pain. Please note that pain medication such as vicodin may cause nausea, vomitting, or hallucination when taking in large dose. Let me know if this is affecting you.

Let me know if you have fever, chill, severes pain which is not controllable with pain medications, dusky or color changes to your toes.

Sutures are generally removed in 2 weeks. You will need to wear your dispensed postop shoe. For bunion surgery, I will take xray picture of your foot at about 4 weeks to evaluate for bone healing. If fixation pins are used for bunion surgery, I will remove them in the clinic procedure room in about 6 weeks.

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