Plantar heel pain is often caused by plantar fasciitis (fasciopathy) and treatment has traditionally included stretching, gel heel inserts and injections. However, in line with the increased clinical focus and evidence regarding mechanotherapy, as re-introduced by Khan and Scott, a novel approach was recently taken by Rathleff et al using exercise and load (mechanotransduction) to treat the inj...

OBJECTIVE To account for the apparent high incidence of pain in the feet of elite women kendo players. METHODS A clinical evaluation was done by a chiropractor, the women were interviewed about their kendo experience, and the conditions and frequency of training and ground reaction forces were measured on a Kistler force plate during the kendo attacking action. RESULTS Four out the five wom...

We report five patients with nutritional osteomalacia who presented with the symptoms and signs of plantar fasciitis. All the patients were Asian vegetarian women. All improved with treatment of the osteomalacia, albeit slowly in two cases.

doi:10.1093/occmed/kqu149 21. Bonita R, Beaglehole R, Kjellstrom T. Basic Epidemiology, 2nd edn. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2006. 22. Scher DL, Belmont PJ, Jr, Bear R, Mountcastle SB, Orr JD, Owens BD. The incidence of plantar fasciitis in the United States military. J Bone Joint Surg Am 2009;91:2867–2872. 23. Noon M, Hoch AZ, McNamara L, Schimke J. Injury patterns in femal...

Ask the patient where the pain is and what it feels like. Patients with plantar fasciitis typically describe a sharp pain under the heel. It may extend along the arch of the foot, from the insertion, along the length of the plantar fascia. Pain is worse when taking their initial steps in the morning and eases after a few minutes of walking, but it may return on weight bearing after periods of i...

Background: This study examined the effects of dry needling on chronic heel pain due to plantar fasciitis.   Methods: During this single-blinded clinical trial, 20 eligible patients were randomized into two groups: A case group treated with dry needling and a control group. Patients’ plantar pain severity, (using modified visual analog scale [VAS] scoring system), range of motion ...

BACKGROUND It remains unclear whether application of local anesthesia (LA) interferes with clinical efficacy of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) for chronic plantar fasciitis. AIMS To evaluate the effect of local anesthesia on the clinical outcome after repetitive low-energy ESWT for chronic plantar fasciitis. METHODS Eighty-six patients with chronic plantar fasciitis were randomly ...

INTRODUCTION Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have reported conflicting results on whether extracorporeal shock wave therapy alleviates the pain of recalcitrant plantar fasciitis patients. We focused on high-energy extracorporeal shock wave therapy (HESWT) and aimed to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of HESWT versus placebo in the treatment of recalcitrant plantar fasciitis. PATIE...

Plantar fasciitis is a common cause of heel pain. It has been suggested that some acupoints have a specific effect on heel pain. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy and specificity of acupuncture treatment for plantar fasciitis. Subjects were randomly assigned to the treatment group (n = 28) or control group (n = 25). The treatment group received needling at the acupoint PC 7, w...

A narrative literature review of RCTs only, was conducted to ascertain which conservative treatments provide the best results for plantar fasciitis patients. Stretching, prefabricated and custom-made orthotics and night splints have all been scrutinized in numerous studies with mixed results. Chiropractic manipulative therapy has been examined in one study, with favorable results. Therapeutic u...