Week 1 - Exploring the mystery that is plantar fasciitis: A week of literature review

Hello everyone!!!!

This week kicked off my senior project and marked the first phase: literature review! Every day, I thoroughly reviewed an article from PUBMED and took notes, allowing me to bridge conceptual gaps and enhance my knowledge of feet-sole anatomy and Plantar Fasciitis.

 While analyzing different articles, I noticed there was a scarcity of research done on nerve compression in correlation to muscle inflammation/plantar fasciitis. Although there has been no confirmation, this project might potentially shift gears, becoming Understanding and alleviating pain from muscle inflammation: A investigative study into Plantar Fasciitis. This slight change in project focus is the best decision for this project because of the lack of literature on nerve compression in correlation to Plantar Fasciitis. This decision will not affect my future interviews with medical professionals and people struggling with Plantar Fasciitis.

Day One:

On Monday, 2/26/24, I began my literature review began with my analysis of the paper Plantar Fasciitis: An Updated Review . This article was the perfect start for me because it thoroughly talked about techniques that help in diagnosing Plantar Fasciitis like ultrasound imaging, sonoelastography, genetic factors, windlass tests, magnetic resonance imaging, and x-rays. After going through different diagnostic methods, the article started to dive deeper into the pathophysiology of Plantar Fasciitis and the causes of the fragmentation and degeneration of the plantar fascia. Learning more about the pathophysiology will help me establish trends across the different research articles I come across and my future interviews. The final and crucial part of this article went into solutions and treatments like physical therapy, night splints, low-level laser therapy, different injection techniques, extracorporeal shock wave therapy, and surgery. The order of this list starts from noninvasive treatments and makes its way to invasive treatments. The article makes it clear that 90 percent of patients will never need invasive treatment, but the question arises: “How does chronic Plantar Fasciitis form and why are some patients not treatable through noninvasive treatment?” In further articles and through future interviews, I hope to address this question and understand the nature of chronic inflammation.

Day Two:

On Tuesday, 2/27/24, I read Evaluation and Treatment of Chronic Plantar Fasciitis. Although this article could have taken a very similar approach to the previous one, this paper dived deep into the anatomy and the structure/function of the plantar fascia. Learning about the anatomy of the foot and the different mechanisms involved like the gait and the windlass mechanism gives more context and understanding with the effects of the degradation of the plantar fascia. The article provided more information when it came to evaluation and diagnosis with more emphasis on physical examinations. This article also provided more information on noninvasive treatments, focusing on medication, stretching, splints, and physical therapy. The invasive treatments were however very similar to the previous article.

Day Three:

The next three articles are in order: Plantar Fasciitis: A Concise Review; Incidence, prevalence, and management of plantar heel pain: a retrospective cohort study in Dutch primary care; and Plantar Fasciitis and the Windlass Mechanism: A Biomechanical Link to Clinical Practice.

The concise review article was analyzed on Wednesday, 2/28/24, and was short but unique in the fact that it had a case study about a 48-year-old patient! This article also outlines the process of treatment and how doctors diagnose and treat Plantar Fasciitis step by step. It outlined several risk factors and other information extremely similar to the two previous articles.

Day Four and Five:

Due to traveling to Australia, I was not able to thoroughly analyze the last two articles.  The Dutch primary care article is extremely important because it outlines the incidence statistics of Plantar Fasciitis using search algorithms and goes into the percentages of different techniques used to diagnose and treat Plantar Fasciitis. This article can provide more insight into my earlier question about the nature of chronic inflammation and how it develops and evades traditional noninvasive treatment.

The windlass mechanism article will give me more conceptual information on the process of gait, which is the sequence of steps used in movement and walking. This article will add to the previous article I analyzed about the anatomy of the foot and connect this knowledge to a more clinical practice standpoint.

Detailed analysis will be done on these two articles during the weekend so that no interruption will occur for the work outlined for next week. That being said, the work done this week has been nothing but fruitful, and I’m excited to continue learning about this extremely fascinating topic.