Conservative treatments for plantar fasciitis have different levels of effectiveness, so it is necessary to personalize the therapeutic modality that improves the patients' symptoms. METHODS: A double-blinded randomized clinical trial was designed to evaluate the short-term efficacy of a physical treatment in chronic plantar fasciitis, namely iontophoresis, compared with radial shockwave therapy. Heel pain, health status using the EuroQol-5D questionnaire, and fascia thickness measured with ultrasound were evaluated. In total, 127 patients were randomly selected for group A and treated with iontophoresis therapy (lidocaine 0.4% and dexamethasone 0.5%), or for group B, in which they were treated with radial shockwave therapy (EWST). Measurements were taken at baseline and at follow-up during the 5 weeks of the study. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences were observed to the shockwave therapy group in respect to the final fascia thickness, and the VAS scale (p = 0.001). The differences between groups A and B showed that the shockwave group follow-up after 3 weeks experienced complete pain remission (1.0 +/- 0.9; 95% CI 0.8 to 1.2) and after the 6-week follow-up, complete pain remission of plantar fasciitis was observed for both therapies. Patients had a better perception of the use of EWST at the end of the treatment, although in both groups it was satisfactory (p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study showed a shorter-term effectiveness of shockwave treatment compared with the use of iontophoresis. However, both techniques were effective in satisfactorily reducing pain in this short period.

Full text (sometimes free) may be available at these link(s):      help

• PubMed Central
• DOI
• PubMed
• PDF locator
• publisher