Plantar fasciitis: a degenerative process (fasciosis) without inflammation
One article on PainSci cites Lemont 2003: Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis
PainSci commentary on Lemont 2003: ?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided wherever possible.
Researchers examined patients undergoing heel spur surgery for plantar fasciitis, and found that their cases were not inflammatory in nature, but well over half of them had clear signs of “degenerative fasciosis without inflammation.”
original abstract †Abstracts here may not perfectly match originals, for a variety of technical and practical reasons. Some abstacts are truncated for my purposes here, if they are particularly long-winded and unhelpful. I occasionally add clarifying notes. And I make some minor corrections.
The authors review histologic findings from 50 cases of heel spur surgery for chronic plantar fasciitis. Findings include myxoid degeneration with fragmentation and degeneration of the plantar fascia and bone marrow vascular ectasia. Histologic findings are presented to support the thesis that "plantar fasciitis" is a degenerative fasciosis without inflammation, not a fasciitis. These findings suggest that treatment regimens such as serial corticosteroid injections into the plantar fascia should be reevaluated in the absence of inflammation and in light of their potential to induce plantar fascial rupture.
related content
- “Treatment of Plantar Fasciitis,” CS Young, DS Rutherford, and MW Niedfeldt, American Family Physician, 2001.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- The CANBACK trial: a randomised, controlled clinical trial of oral cannabidiol for people presenting to the emergency department with acute low back pain. Bebee 2021 Med J Aust.
- Relationships Between Sleep Quality and Pain-Related Factors for People with Chronic Low Back Pain: Tests of Reciprocal and Time of Day Effects. Gerhart 2017 Ann Behav Med.
- Modulation in the elastic properties of gastrocnemius muscle heads in individuals with plantar fasciitis and its relationship with pain. Zhou 2020 Sci Rep.
- Association Between Plantar Fasciitis and Isolated Gastrocnemius Tightness. Nakale 2018 Foot Ankle Int.
- A Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis of the power pose effect with informed and default priors: the case of felt power. Gronau 2017 Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.