Management of Plantar Fasciitis by Extracorporeal Shockwave therapy

The benefits of Extracorporeal shockwave therapy on chronic and acute plantar fasciitis has been proven via many research studies. Plantar fasciitis/fasciosis is the most common cause of heel pain.

Chronic and Acute Plantar Fasciitis

Today, we look at a meta-analysis that was collected from research studies on MEDLINE, Embase, and CINAHL. The studies included randomized controlled trials on adults that continued to be symptomatic with heel pain despite minimum of 3 months of conservative treatment. Collectively, the meta-analysis found that patients that had underwent extracorporeal shockwave therapy for the management of heel pain showed greater improvement in pain scores and the improvement is maintained for up to 12 months post-treatment. This suggests shockwave therapy has been extremely effective in managing both chronic and acute heel pain. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23813184/

Research articles have also studied and proven the effects of shockwave therapy in reduction of acute inflammatory heel pain, and reduction in edema as a result of the inflammatory process.

The main benefit of shockwave therapy is to increase blood flow to the area of injury/pain to help deliver nutrients and oxygen to repair tissue. This results in an increase in the immune response to increase the rate of healing.

Heel Spurs

Shockwave therapy is also very effective for individuals suffering from heel spurs, which can further complicate cases of plantar fasciitis. A Heel spur is bone growth that occurs on the calcaneal bone. Most commonly the plantar aspect at the site of plantar fasciitis insertion, or the posterior aspect of calcaneal bone, at the site of achilles tendon insertion point. Research studies have shown that shockwave therapy results in reduction in pain associated with heel spurs and some articles indicate it may also structurally modify bone spurs, and reduce inflammatory oedema. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1753417/