Washington Redskins wide receiver Pierre Garcon has revealed that he turned down surgery on his troublesome foot because of a lack previous successful examples.

Garcon suffered with an injured toe for much of the last campaign that caused him to miss a number of games in his debut season with the Redskins.

However, the 26-year-old turned down the chance to have an operation to help solve the problem due to there being no precedent of a wide receiver fully recovering from similar surgery on a similar injury.

"It was an easy decision, because the process has never really been gone through by an NFL player to try and come back and play as a receiver where you put all your pressure on the foot you need to have surgery on," Garcon told reporters.

"If it was something else, it probably would have been a lot easier to say, 'OK, let's do it'. But the foot was so much uncertainty because it's such a small area, and there wasn't any real, for-sure research done on it that said it would help and it would cure it.

"So it was easy for me. I had to go through pain and continue to go through pain until it worked."

Garcon only managed 10 matches for the Redskins last season, scoring four touchdowns in the process.