Comparison Between Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy and Local Corticosteroid Injection for Plantar Fasciitis.

BACKGROUND: Extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) is a nonsurgical treatment for plantar fasciitis (PF) that has had satisfactory clinical outcomes. However, local corticosteroid injection (LCI) is often regarded as first-line treatment of PF, but there have been few studies comparing the 2 methods. Therefore, we compared the effect of ESWT and LCI on patients with PF.

METHODS: This was a block randomized controlled study comparing 49 patients treated with ESWT and 47 patients treated with LCI from January 2017 to December 2018 who were followed for 6 months. We evaluated the clinical outcomes in the 2 groups, including average pain, first-step pain, plantar fascia thickness, and Foot Function Index, Chinese version of the PF patients.

RESULTS: All patients had pain relief and function improvement after treatment, whereas the LCI group did not maintain significant clinical improvement at the 3-month follow-up. The patients in the ESWT group had a significantly better clinical outcome with better duration of improvement than the LCI group.

CONCLUSION: For PF patients, both ESWT and LCI resulted in clinical improvement but EWST provided longer relief than LCI.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II, prospective comparative study.