I had a terrible experience with Dr. Ravick, who operated on my feet in several spots. It was a simple procedure requiring the filing down of some protruding bone on my big and small toes. The result nine months later was a horribly skewed big toe (previously straight). I couldn't wear any shoe without developing a blister or worse, a problem I'd never had before, and that's if my foot could get into that shoe in the first place. Equally upsetting, my foot was so deformed it was unrecognizable. Elsewhere, it was like nothing had been done as the bones were back where they had been, and in one case the X-ray shows a slight move toward becoming crooked.
As if all this wasn't upsetting enough, I had to play "private eye" to get to the bottom of what had happened with Dr. Ravick. I had to ultimately ask him to take new X-rays to determine definitively the difference between before and after as he didn't seem very bothered himself, and to extract a theory from him as to what may have happened: the stitching of the ligament over the bone hadn't been tight enough! He then put me through the charade of wrapping my foot up for two months with a strap to straighten out the big toe followed by a bandage I couldn't remove for a whole week, all to no avail as my big toe kept moving inward: month by month, as I can prove with subsequent X-rays, it just kept moving inward. I didn't go back to him after the bandage charade, and of course he never bothered to find out if it had worked or not, surprise surprise.
I have now had surgery with a different podiatrist that as a result required a bunionectomy that included the cutting of the bone to put the toe back in its place on one of my feet in two places. Just as memories of Dr. Ravick were beginning to fade from my hurt and angry self, another surprise: the surgical shoe the new surgeon gives me to wear is exactly the same make as what Dr. Ravick had given me - but at least two sizes smaller! In other words, it was my size! Dr Ravick hadn't even bothered to get me the right size shoes and I recall hobbling about like a duck wearing oversized shoes on both feet at the time, which he had explained to me when I had asked him as being the right size designed to "protect" the feet!
Negligence and apathy are terms that don't do justice to what I experienced. The staff in his office, however, were terrific, both professional and helpful.
I hope this review alerts would-be patients of any surgeon to this issue of loose stitching that can cause bones to move out of their original positions, which my research has shown is very rare. But, it happened to me, so discuss this with your doctor beforehand. read more