This article shows that shock wave therapy may help your plantar fascitis if you have 1) pain taking first steps in the morning, edema/swelling and a heel spur seen on x-rays. The last time I checked, an orthopedic surgeon here in Lubbock, Dr. Alejandro Verdugo uses shock wave therapy for these problems.
Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
December 2017 Volume 98, Issue 12, Pages 2371–2377
Mengchen Yin, MD
Abstract
Objective
To identify factors for the outcome of a minimum clinically successful therapy and to establish a predictive model of extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) in managing patients with chronic plantar fasciitis.
Design
Randomized, controlled, prospective study.
Setting
Outpatient of local medical center settings.
Participants
Patients treated for symptomatic chronic plantar fasciitis between 2014 and 2016 (N=278).
Interventions
ESWT was performed by the principal authors to treat chronic plantar fasciitis. ESWT was administered in 3 sessions, with an interval of 2 weeks (±4d). In the low-, moderate-, and high-intensity groups, 2400 impulses total of ESWT with an energy flux density of 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6mJ/mm2, respectively (a rate of 8 impulses per second), were applied.
Main Outcome Measures
The independent variables were patient age, sex, body mass index, affected side, duration of symptoms, Roles and Maudsley score, visual analog scale (VAS) score when taking first steps in the morning, edema, bone spurs, and intensity grade of ESWT. A minimal reduction of 50% in the VAS score was considered as minimum clinically successful therapy. The correlations between the achievement of minimum clinically successful therapy and independent variables were analyzed. The statistically significant factors identified were further analyzed by multivariate logistic regression, and the predictive model was established.
Results
The success rate of ESWT was 66.9%. Univariate analysis found that VAS score when taking first steps in the morning, edema, and the presence of heel spur in radiograph significantly affected the outcome of the treatment. Logistic regression drew the equation: minimum clinically successful therapy=(1+e[.011+42.807×heel spur+.109×edema+5.395×VAS score])−1.The sensitivity of the predictive factors was 96.77%, 87.63%, and 86.02%, respectively. The specificity of the predictive factors was 45.65%, 42.39%, and 85.87%, respectively. The area under the curve of the predictive factors was .751, .650, and .859, respectively. The Youden index was .4243, .3003, and .7189, respectively. The Hosmer-Lemeshow test showed a good fitting of the predictive model, with an overall accuracy of 89.6%.
Conclusions
This study establishes a new and accurate predictive model for the efficacy of ESWT in managing patients with chronic plantar fasciitis. The use of these parameters, in the form of a predictive model for ESWT efficacy, has the potential to improve decision-making in the application of ESWT.