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Extracorporeal shockwave therapy plus rehabilitation for patients with chronic plantar fasciitis might reduce pain and improve function but still not lead to increased activity: A case-series study with multiple outcome measures

journal contribution
posted on 2017-10-30, 15:01 authored by Patrick WheelerPatrick Wheeler, Chloe Tattersall
Plantar fasciitis is a common cause of plantar-aspect heel pain. Although many patients will improve, a proportion will have ongoing and sometimes debilitating symptoms. Evidence from randomized controlled trials has shown that extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) results in benefits in treating pain. However, uncertainties remain whether these benefits translate to improvements in overall function. The present prospective case series examined the results from 35 patients with chronic plantar fasciitis who had undergone a course of ESWT in addition to a graded rehabilitation program. Of the 35 subjects, 34% were male, and the median age was 50.9 years. The duration of symptoms before ESWT was 24 months. The results of the present case series demonstrated statistically significant improvements in measures of self-reported “average pain” from a median of 7.0 of 10 at baseline to 5.0 of 10 at 3 months (p<.001) and of “worst pain” from 9.0 of 10 at baseline to 7.0 of 10 at 3 months (p<.001). In addition, significant improvements were found in several validated patient-rated outcome measures of local foot/ankle function but not in overall markers of health, anxiety/ depression scores, or activity levels, despite the improvements in pain. No statistically significant correlations were found between gender, age, or chronicity of symptoms and the improvements seen. No significant side effects occurred in the present study. The results of our series support the use of ESWT for patients with chronic plantar fasciitis for local pain symptoms; however, uncertainties remain regarding global benefits to health.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

The Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery

Citation

WHEELER, P.C. and TATTERSALL, C., 2018. Extracorporeal shockwave therapy plus rehabilitation for patients with chronic plantar fasciitis might reduce pain and improve function but still not lead to increased activity: A case-series study with multiple outcome measures. The Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery, 57(2), pp. 339-345.

Publisher

© the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. Published by Elsevier

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2017-10-09

Notes

This paper is in closed access.

ISSN

1067-2516

eISSN

1542-2224

Language

  • en

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