If you get an aching pain under the big toe joint, it might be an injury to one of the two little bones called the sesamoid bones.
The sesamoid bone injuries make me super nervous. If you are a runner and you start getting pain and irritation if the sesamoids, you do not want to ignore it.
I just got off a call with a woman who had sesamoiditis. She wanted to make sure that she was not doing anything to slow the recovery of her sesamoid stress fracture.
With summer coming up, she wanted to know what kind of sandals she might be able to wear.
What summer sandals should I wear if I have sesamoiditis?
Well, that is a good question and that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »If you have a fractured sesamoid bone, the biggest concern is that the sesamoid fracture will turn into a fracture nonunion.
“Non-union” means it did not unite. The two broken pieces did not get back together, and the fractured sesamoid bone did not heal.
I was talking to a runner who had a sesamoid injury and she wanted to know whether or not surgery was a good option in her case.
We talked broadly speaking about three different possible kinds of sesamoid surgeries.
Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about surgical options for sesamoid fracture nonunion.
View Details »I got a great question from a runner with a sesamoid fracture that turned into a “non-union.”
The sesamoid bones are two tiny little bones under the big toe joint. When you break one of the sesamoids, if two pieces of bone do not heal back together, we call a “sesamoid fracture non-union.”
In this runner’s case, she used a bone stimulator. She wore a fracture boot. She used crutches. But after a year of treatment, the doctor looked at her X-ray and said, “You have a non-union, we should take it out.”
Is it possible to run if you have a sesamoid fracture non-union?
That is a great question and that is what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
View Details »This episode comes from a question from one of the Doc on the Run YouTube channel viewers who wanted to know about “bilateral bipartite sesamoid bones” and what that really means.
I get these kind of questions all the time, when somebody really wants to know what a term means, and what the implications are for them as a runner. Usually the runner is trying to figure out how to keep running while the sesamoid heals.
Sometimes the concern is a sesamoid stress fracture or a condition like sesamoiditis where you start to get pain under the big toe joint.
If you see a doctor, they look at your x-rays, they may tell you, “Oh, you have bilateral bipartite sesamoids.”
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about bilateral bipartite sesamoid bones in a runner.
A runner with pain under the big toe joint said she was told she had a problem with the sesamoid bones in her foot.
The doctor said maybe it was sesamoiditis, or a sesamoid stress reaction or possibly even a sesamoid stress fracture.
Her question was, “What exactly are the semisolid bones in the foot?”
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast, we’re talking about these weird little things called the sesamoid bones in the foot.
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Sesamoid injuries can be serious and can keep injured runners running.
Sesamoids are small fragile bones and if they become inflamed and turn into a stress fracture they can crack, break and become permanently damaged. If you have surgery to remove a permanently damaged sesamoid bone, your foot will never be the same.
Our guest today went through a long battle with a sesamoid injury and then got back to marathon training.
Today on the Doc On The Run Podcast we are talking with Isabel about the strategies she used to recover from sesamoiditis and start training for the London marathon.
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Just today I got an interesting question from Victoria, who has been suffering with a bad case of sesamoiditis which has been keeping her from running.
She saw an orthopedic surgeon who who thinks there is scar tissue around the sesamoid bone restricting the range of motion and causing the pain under the big toe joint.
The doctor explained to her that one other conservative option, which might help her avoid sesamoid surgery would be a corticosteroid injection which is sometimes also called a Cortizone injection.
So her question was:
“How exactly do steroid injections help? Do they break up scar tissue? The orthopedic surgeon told me to be cautious about doing steroid injections, but I never got a clear explanation as to why.”
Today on the Doc On The Run podcast, we’re talking about the good and bad of cortizone injections for sesamoiditis in runners.
A runner and a listener to the podcast recently sent in a question regarding how long it takes to heal an old fracture versus a new fracture.
There are many risk factors for developing problems with healing a broken bone.
Each year there are about six million broken bones the United States. Somewhere between 5% and 10% of all of those fractures do not heal as quickly as we would hope and turn into what is called a fracture non-union or a delayed union.
A “fracture non-union” is just what it sounds like. It means to the fractured pieces of bone did not unite. They did not get back together and the fracture just did not heal.
A “delayed union” is a broken bone that isn’t healing as quickly as we would expect.
Today on the Doc On Run Podcast we’re talking about the difference in healing time of an “old fracture” vs a “recent fracture.”
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