My Journey from 2009 to 2014 with the HyProCure® Implant

Prior history from 2009 surgeries – original Hyprocure Implant Procedures on both feet

I was born with flexible flat feet. I have full overpronation; completely flat feet. I cannot achieve full correction even with the best custom-made orthotics. I’m 34 years old, and a very active young woman. I run 3 to 5 days a week, I walk all over the city as I don’t drive, and I bike/spin, and I also snowboard often during the winter. Throughout my teenage years, I developed severe pain and shin splints from running, which progressed to knee and hip pain as I got older. I finally decided to do these surgeries for the hyprocure implant in 2009, as I was 28 years old and was having extreme pain which was limiting my activity levels. I was confined to running on a treadmill for a max of 4 miles, and would have to run every other day at best. I couldn’t wear stylish high heels as I’d be in pain by the end of the day.

I lived in San Diego at the time, and the doctor I’d been seeing for my custom orthotics and physical therapy recommended that I probably need to pursue surgery. She actually got me in touch with the doctor most well-known in San Diego for these procedures. The doctor did a great job (Dr Gregory Clark in San Diego). He used a size 8 implant in both feet, and it was done with just a nerve block for numbing pain; I didn’t need general anesthesia. My insurance company back in 2009 was not wanting to pay for the procedures so the doctor figured we could do this locally in his office (which was a very high-end, new office with very nice facilities/machines). It worked out just fine for both feet.

I did the right foot in April 2009 and the left foot Sep 2009. Both procedures went very well, and I had a very high quality of life enabling full activity without pain due to the severe misalignment from the overpronation of my feet. I’m trying to remember exactly when it was comfortable to wear high heels again… seems to be sometime about 8 weeks after each surgery. As for running, I believe I was back to running on the treadmill by 12 weeks. I’ll track it more carefully this time though since I’m documenting in this blog. I was able to wear a more neutral running shoe as opposed to one specializing in overpronation. Plus, I had a new pair of custom orthotics cast for my “new” feet.

As a note: the left foot I did on Sep 10, 2009 and had flown on a vacation from San Diego to Hawaii on Sept 24 just two weeks later. No complications at all from the 5hr flight and was fairly active on my foot with a lot of walking around, but did not go in the ocean for fear of risking infection to the wound (which is fine as the pools were fun and overlooked the ocean).

So, you’re probably wondering what happened then in the next 5 years to bring us to Dec 2014? Well, life has been beautiful. My quality of life is extremely high; I’m very active – working out over 4-5 days a week, and I live in downtown San Francisco and walk all over the city (I don’t drive). My favorite running paths are through Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach or along the Marina or Embarcadero. I wear high heels whenever I want, and my feet were doing so well up until about the end of 2013. I noticed the correction in my right was nowhere near as good as it was 5 years earlier. The left foot seemed okay at that time, but the right foot was only about 50% of it’s original full correction from the hyprocure implant procedure in Mar 2009. I guess it was just slipping out of place. I continued to work out just as hard; I got new orthotics made with more correction and I stepped up my running shoe to go to a more supportive base.

By May of 2014, the right foot had lost almost all of it’s correction. I went to a local doctor here in San Francisco, and she told me that she never would have done the hyprocure implant on me to begin with as she felt I was too active and there wasn’t enough research done yet on the long term effects. Hence, she’s more conservative and typically doesn’t operate on patients. She suggested I stop running and wear clunky shoes with clunky orthotics all the time. I kindly thanked her for her medical opinioin but told her that I hold firm when I say that having these procedures done in 2009 was the best thing I ever could have done. My quality of life is so great from being able to be as active as I want and have no pain. I called my doctor in San Diego that had done the hyprocure implants and he suggested I get them redone, and he’d be happy to do them again for me as we had good results 5 years earlier, but it might be better if I found a doctor locally in San Francisco as I live there now. I agreed it was more convenient to find a doctor closer to home. After several days of research (I wanted to find a doctor that had performed a large number of these procedures), I had narrowed it down to two options and they were both over an hour away from San Francisco. I finally went with Dr Richard Abe in San Jose; he does several of these procedures a month and is a certified Master Surgeon with Gramedica (they make the implant).  My first appt with him was at the end of Aug 2014 and I immediately liked working with him.

Dr. Abe took x-rays of both my feet and confirmed the right foot implant had come out of the joint about 70% of the way. He said the left foot had come out a little bit but I still had enough correction that he didn’t think it was necessary to re-do the left foot yet so we’d focus on my right foot. We scheduled the surgery for Dec as he’s conservative with the recovery period and didn’t want me doing any flying for 3 weeks after the procedure. I travel a lot for work, so Dec 1 was the earliest I could guarantee that I could avoid flying for 3 weeks. I went in for another physical pre-op appt at the beginning of Nov and he took x-rays again. When comparing the Nov x-rays to those he took in Aug, we could easily see that the implant in my right foot was completely displaced now. And, the one in my left foot was becoming more displaced. By the time I went in for my surgery on Dec 1, I was noticing that the left foot is as flat as the right foot.

As several folks have asked me this: the two medical devices I recommend are the aircast boot and aircast stirrup brace.