Background: Many patients with hallux valgus progress to experiencing pain and loss of function that requires corrective surgery when nonoperative treatments fail. The primary goal of this study was to measure changes in participants' health while patients waited for their operative correction.
Methods: Patients were prospectively recruited to complete a number of patient-reported outcome measures preoperatively. Baseline data collection was initiated in October 2014, and participants' second surveys were returned by August 2017. The setting of the study was Vancouver, Canada. There were 80 participants in the study. The participation rate among eligible patients was 52.7%.
Results: The average wait time for surgery exceeded 8 months, with a mean wait of 35.7 weeks. Baseline pain among participants was high. Only in the domain of foot- and ankle-related quality of life was the duration of wait time associated with participants' change in health. The other 4 domains of foot function remained stable over the preoperative period.
Conclusion: Preoperative health in this study was consistent with other research showing high pain and compromised foot function among patients failing nonoperative therapies for treatment of hallux valgus. This study found high pain and compromised foot function among patients waiting for hallux valgus surgery but only minor relationships between participants' duration of wait time for operative correction of the first metatarsophalangeal joint and changes in patient-reported outcome scores.
Level of evidence: Level III, comparative study.
Keywords: bunion; hallux valgus; patient-reported outcomes; quality of life; wait time.