Journal of Rehabilitation (Oct 2007)
Comparison between Medial Heel Wedge Effect and Lateral Forefoot Wedge Effect on Improvement of Activity Daily Living, Sport and Recreational Activities and Pain in Plantar Fasciitis Patients
Abstract
Objective: Plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot complications. Pain appear at the inside part of the anterior margin of calcaneous bone. The goal of this study was a comparative between the effect of medial heel wedge and lateral forefoot wedge on improvement of Activity daily living, Sport and pain in these patients. Materials & Methods: In this interventional and quasi experimental study, 30 patients with plantar fasciitis including 12 male and 18 female with 36 involved extremities were selected by non probability sampling. The patients were allocated in two groups with 15 patients in each group by random assignment. First group used medial heel wedge and second group used lateral forefoot wedge. Variables including activity daily living, sport and recreational activity, step length were measured in 3 stages. In order to evaluating of the variables FAOS questionnaire was used. 3 stages included: once before intervention and the second and third stages after 2 weeks and the third stage 4 weeks after intervention. Alpha cronbach in all subscales were more than 0/71 and test retest correlation in all subscales were more than 0/80. Data analysis has been done with T-Test, Smironov-Kolomogrov, Alpha Cronbach and Correlation Coefficient. Results: In both follow up stages, the change of variables including activity daily living, sport and recreational activity and pain was significant (P<0.05). But there was no significant difference between two patient groups in step length variables in both follow up stages (P=0.518 for the first follow up stage and P=0.502 for the second follow up stage). Conclusion: According to finding of this study, medial heel wedge was more effective on improvement of activity daily living, sport and recreational activity and pain in both follow up stages than the lateral forefoot wedge. But medial heel wedge wasn’t more effective on step length increasing than lateral forefoot wedge.
