The effectiveness of insole or orthotic interventions for plantar heel pain can be highly variable, with some patients reporting excellent relief while others reporting no change. New evidence indicates that gender and baseline function may be two key predictive factors to determine which patients are most likely to have a favorable response.
In a new study in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, 139 heel pain patients were provided with insole intervention. 70 of these subjects received custom-designed insoles, while the other 69 acted as the control group and received a generic, non-customized form of insole intended to act as a “sham” treatment.
On the whole, the benefits of the custom-insoles were not significantly superior compared to the generic sham insoles. Interestingly, however, when patients were stratified by gender and baseline function, the researchers found that the patients who were female and had better baseline function showed a strong, statistically significant improvement in response to either form of insole intervention. In contrast, patients who were male or who exhibited extremely poor function at baseline demonstrated no noticeable improvement in response to insole implementation.
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Responses to insole intervention appear highly variable, and evidence is unclear whether customized insoles offer additional benefits compared to generic forms. For practitioners considering whether to trial this form of intervention in patients, gender and baseline function may serve as useful factors for consideration alongside clinical presentation for predicting the likelihood of a successful outcome.
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