Plantar fasciit – evidens för stötvågsbehandling för smärtlindring och förbättrad funktion, en systematisk litteraturstudie?

Sammanfattning:

Aim

The aim of the present study was to study possible evidence for shock wave therapy on pain and function in patients with plantar fasciitis.

Questions

1. Does shock wave therapy reduce pain in patients with plantar fasciitis?

2. Does shock wave therapy improve function in patients with plantar fasciitis?

Method

A systematic review of the literature was performed in the databases PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane and Cinahl. This resulted in 18 randomized controlled trials where shock wave therapy was compared with placebo. All articles were scored according to the PEDro Scale and a checklist was also used to assess the methodological quality.

Results

Ten of 17 trials that assessed pain reported a statistically significant group difference in pain reduction in favour of the shock wave therapy group. In nine of 16 trials that assessed function, a statistically significant group difference was shown in terms of improvement of function, with greater improvement in the shock wave therapy group.

Conclusions

There is no clear evidence for pain reduction and improvement of function in patients with plantar fasciitis. A slight majority of the trials showed statistically significant differences between the groups according to pain and function indicating that shock wave therapy may be somewhat more effective than placebo.