What can a foot doctor do to resolve hammer toes?

Our Caldwell Podiatrists Have Spent Decades Helping People Just Like You Fix Hammer Toe

Hammer toe is a common condition that affects the joints of your toes. It doesn’t always hurt or limit mobility, but its symptoms can grow substantially worse with time. Your feet deserve better than the threat of deformity and disability. Rocky Mountain Foot & Ankle’s team has spent years helping people stay on their feet. Learn how our experienced Meridian and Caldwell podiatrists offer a wide range of effective treatments for hammer toe, from physical therapy and basic immobilization to high-priority surgery for the most serious cases.

An Overview of Hammer Toe

You can probably tell if you have a hammer toe just by looking at your joints. Your toes might look like they’re bent all the time—even when you’re at rest or aren’t engaged in any sort of physical activity. Other common hammer toe symptoms include:

Pain typically near the top of the affected toe or on the ball of your foot

Trouble moving or flexing the affected toes

Corns and calluses forming around the top of the affected toe

Uncomfortable, noticeable, or recurring inflammation and swelling

Easily bruised or discolored skin

Many cases of hammer toe don’t trigger any serious symptoms, but this condition usually won’t improve without treatment. If ignored, it grows progressively worse, eventually preventing you from moving your affected toes.

Why Complications Aren’t Worth the Risk

A hammer toe is easy to ignore. Although most people eventually lose flexibility in their affected toe, you can typically move your joint and flex it. However, as more and more time goes by, the tendons surrounding your hammer toe may begin to tighten. Moving it could become more difficult—maybe even impossible.

There are several long-term effects of untreated hammer toe. Inflexible joints affect your gait and posture or cause permanent and potentially irreversible foot deformities. A bent joint is also at higher risk for corns and calluses.

Temporary and Long-Term Hammer Toe Treatment

You may be able to self-diagnose a hammer toe at home, but you shouldn’t ever try to treat this concern without a podiatrist’s input. Some conditions, like mallet toe, exhibit similar symptoms, yet often have different causes, requiring alternate types of care.

Here’s how you can relieve initial hammer toe symptoms before your appointment with Rocky Mountain Foot & Ankle, and what your Caldwell podiatrist might recommend after making a hammer toe diagnosis.

Home Remedies

If you need more than a few days to make your way into our office but can’t deal with the discomfort, you may be able to temporarily alleviate symptoms by changing your footwear.

Prioritize shoes that:

Are made from a comfortable material.
Have at least a half-inch of space between your longest toe and the inside tip of the shoe.
Don’t rub against the tip of your affected toe.

Certain kinds of anti-inflammatory medication can also help with hammer toe discomfort, but you shouldn’t take a pain reliever or other drug unless you know what to expect in terms of your own body’s reaction.

Podiatric Solutions

One of our skilled podiatrists can probably diagnose a condition like hammer toe or mallet toe within a matter of minutes. Depending on the severity of your injury and the intensity of your symptoms, your treatment plan could include:

Pads and taping. We’ll teach you how to pad and tape your toes. This approach shields your joints from damage, reduces swelling, and forces your toes into the right position.
Prescription shoes or inserts. Rocky Mountain Foot & Ankle has years of experience designing custom orthotics, a type of prescription footwear in the form of a shoe or a shoe insert. Orthotics are made for individual patients—not simply pulled from a shelf—and engineered to optimize your comfort while correcting serious foot, gait, and posture problems related to hammer toe development.
Pain relievers. We might also prescribe nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, to reduce inflammation and swelling around your hammer toe. Some over-the-counter options can help, but you should avoid taking too much medication without first obtaining an accurate diagnosis.
Physical therapy. Toe stretches and exercises help loosen your tendons, rebuild muscle, and move your toes back into the right position.

In rare cases, Rocky Mountain Foot & Ankle may recommend hammer toe surgery. However, procedures are only advisable if you’re struggling with intense pain or have pronounced difficulty walking.