You might not have heard of the condition known as sesamoiditis before being diagnosed with it. This inflammatory condition may be the source of foot pain, and it typically results from overuse.
At the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, foot and ankle and sports medicine specialist Dr. Michael L. Blackwell and his team in Tomball, Kingwood, and Shenandoah, Texas, support you in diagnosing and recovering from sesamoiditis in your feet or knees.
Let’s talk more about what a sesamoiditis diagnosis means for you.
You have a few sesamoid bones in your body. These bones don’t connect to other bones via joints. Instead, your sesamoid bones are embedded in muscle, or connected to the rest of your skeleton only through tendons.
Your biggest sesamoid bones are your kneecaps. You also have two tiny sesamoid bones in each of your feet, located in the bottom area of your forefoot near your big toe.
Your sesamoid bones help your body function better, both in your feet and in your knees. These bones provide support to your tendons, helping them to more smoothly transmit muscle force and provide weight-bearing support.
Repetitive stress and overuse can put a lot of pressure on the sesamoid bones in the ball of your foot or in your knees. In severe cases, your sesamoid bones may even fracture or break under too much pressure.
Too much sesamoid stress in your knees can also harm neighboring muscles. Further, if you have inflammation around the sesamoid bones in your foot, you can develop sesamoiditis in the tendons that hold these bones in place. This condition is a type of tendonitis.
You’re at a higher risk of sesamoiditis if you regularly bear your weight on the balls of your feet. It’s not surprising, then, that dancers and athletes like runners and baseball players often suffer from this condition.
Symptoms of sesamoiditis may come on slowly, becoming more and more intense over time. You feel pain centered on the big toe of the affected foot. This may be accompanied by swelling, bruising, and loss of range of motion in your big toe.
The first part of treating sesamoiditis involves rest. You need to take pressure off of the affected part of your body so inflammation can subside. Often, this condition improves after a period of rest and recovery, which may possibly take multiple weeks or even months.
However, relatively few patients end up needing surgery for sesamoiditis.
You may also benefit from anti-inflammatory medication to help calm reactions in your body, or from icing therapy for the bottom of your affected foot.
Dr. Blackwell and the team at the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine work with you to put together a treatment plan that soothes your symptoms and restores your feet to full health and function.
To learn more about care for sesamoiditis, contact Dr. Blackwell at the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. Schedule your initial consultation by calling now, or book online today.
