Many patients don’t realise that the unsightly rub lesions over toe knuckles can most often be permanently removed with modern surgical techniques. Knuckle lesions such as callouses, corns and bursitis with loss of pigment, can all be safely treated by “corn removal surgery”, which normally takes under 10 minutes per toe, usually under a local anaesthetic.
A corn is a skin lesion of hard compacted area of dead skin.
It can form a hard “seed” or “corn” in the centre of surrounding callous (hard skin). Often the toe can be too long or bent (such as a hammertoe), which raises the knuckle that rubs against the shoe and causes the corn to form. The same treatment (below) can be used for patients with dark or light skin corn lesions (hyper or hypo-pigmentation).
The procedure to remove a corn is called a skin plasty, which removes the corn completely, and the bursa underneath.