Why congenital hand and foot deformities such as floating bunions, syndactyly and polydactyly should be operated on as early as possible

Many parents have questions: Why should we do the surgery as early as possible for pediatric congenital hand and foot deformities? It is very painful to do the surgery when the child is small, wouldn’t it be better to wait for the child to be older and do the surgery? In fact, I understand the feelings of parents, but in some cases, especially in pediatric congenital hand and foot deformities, from a medical point of view, the sooner the surgery is done, the better the child will recover, and the child will not be psychologically affected. In the course of my consultation, I have met many patients who have very low self-esteem and introversion because of hand and foot deformities, and they are also under certain psychological pressure. Some time ago, a mother brought her child to the clinic, the child’s right thumb and forefinger is obviously much larger than the left hand, is a typical giant finger, the child’s mother said that in kindergarten children are still young and do not know much, so they will not pay too much attention to the child’s hand, but a lot of parents will see the parents will ask. She is worried that as the child grows up, people will pay extra attention to the child’s hand, when the child realizes that his hand is different from others will have low self-esteem, she said that even if the child to take a break from school, but also to do the surgery first, hope that the child’s hand looks at least the same as everyone else. There was also a 16-year-old boy with a floating thumb on his right hand. He had never used his thumb to write in his entire life because he had not had the surgery when he was a child and had encountered a lot of problems growing up, but after he underwent the floating thumb surgery, his thumb function recovered quite well, and he was able to use his thumb to write his name for the first time. Although the surgery could have been done at this age, the results were not as good as the child’s recovery. Because the surgery was done late, the floating bunion put the teenager through a lot of hardship, so even at 16, he had to have the floating bunion surgery done. There is also a young man with polydactyly, who is already in his 20s. When he found me, he asked if he could have it cut now because of the polydactyly, when he was in elementary school, he was asked by some children why this little toe had an extra one and what was wrong with it, and he had no way of answering. In order to avoid such an embarrassing phenomenon, he never wore sandals or slippers, and he would not expose his feet on even the hottest days, but now that he is slowly getting older, he wants to have his feet done through the surgery to make his feet like normal. Although surgery is possible now, it will have some impact on his study and work. There was also a girl with syndactyly who didn’t pay too much attention to it when she was young, but when she grew up, she felt that it was very unattractive, and she wanted to wear sandals, so she had a syndactyly and splitting operation in the local hospital, but not long after, the fourth toe and the fifth toe merged together again, so she went to another hospital to have the operation, and she specifically asked me to show her the recovery situation, and she always emphasized that she wanted to look good with sandals because syndactyly affects the aesthetics of a girl. She kept emphasizing that she just wanted to look good in sandals because for a girl, it does not affect her beauty. There are many cases like this, and many adults regret very much that they did not have the surgery when they were small, which led to their very low self-esteem when they were growing up. Therefore, parents must pay attention to their children’s congenital hand and foot deformities, and let their children undergo the surgery earlier, and the function and appearance will usually be improved well after the surgery, and the surgery should be done before they go to school at the latest, so that there will not be any psychological impact on the children, and it will also not This will have no psychological effect on the child and will not affect the child’s future study, work, socialization, etc.