Week 2 - A continuation of literature review and analysis

Welcome back everyone for week two as we embark into the realm of muscle inflammation and Plantar Fasciitis. This week was a continuation of literature review and I started the week off by further analyzing the last papers from last week: 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.

While I originally aimed to completely analyze and take notes on one paper everyday, I have now come to see how unfeasible that goal is. The content in these papers are extremely dense and oftentimes require more independent research to understand the concepts mentioned. I do hope to continue my goal of analyzing a paper a day; but as of right now, I’m being mindful of the workload and adjusting my expectations accordingly.

The first paper I thoroughly analyzed this week was the study done in the Dutch primary care which proved to be extremely informative. The paper talked about the overall incidence rate, the frequency or rate at which new cases of a particular condition occur within a specified population over a defined period of time, of Plantar Fasciitis and looked at the occurrence/treatment patterns among general practitioners. All the anonymous data was gathered using the Primary Care Information database. They were able to determine the newly diagnosed cases of Plantar Fasciitis and find the total number of person-year follow ups which proved to be instrumental in getting the incidence rate of this condition. To me, finding these statistics gave a lot of insight into how many people undergo chronic Plantar Fasciitis and more into how many people undergo different types of treatment. This study tracked how many people underwent which kind of treatment and also tracked the success rate and if a follow up was required.

The second paper I analyzed went deep into the anatomy of the foot which required knowledge of the gait cycle and different joints and bones. To thoroughly analyze this paper, future research had to be done in these topics which prolonged the time for analysis. The gait cycle, consisting of alternating phases of stance and swing, encompasses the sequence of movements involved in walking and running, including initial contact, weight acceptance, midstance, propulsion, and toe-off. The paper aimed to describe and explain the causes and appropriate treatment of plantar fasciitis from a biomechanical perspective, relating normal foot biomechanics to the gait cycle and biomechanical dysfunction to plantar fascia abnormalities. Most treatment methods discussed in this paper were quite outdated, but learning and understanding how different everyday processes can lead to stress and tears in the plantar fascia was rewarding.

By the time this blog post is uploaded, a third research paper titled THE MANAGEMENT OF PLANTAR FASCIITIS WITH A MUSCULOSKELETAL ULTRASOUND IMAGING GUIDED APPROACH FOR INSTRUMENT ASSISTED SOFT TISSUE MOBILIZATION IN A RUNNER: A CASE REPORT will be fully analyzed. This paper was unique because it fully dives into the 46 year old patient who is dealing with plantar heel pain. The paper first starts by explaining how examination was done and what assessments were used to reach the diagnosis of Plantar Fasciitis. Understanding how doctors rule out other heel pain was informative because Plantar Fasciitis shares many similar symptoms to other foot pain like Tarsal Tunnel syndrome and Baxter Neuroma. This paper dives deep into patient scans and the thought process that went into diagnosis and treatment. As the weeks progress in my project, I hope to analyze more case studies to see trends in data and symptoms.

Now that the first two weeks of my project are coming to a close, I want to quickly outline what the future weeks will be looking like. The next two weeks will be a continuation of the literature review but will primarily focus on case studies and analyzing the reference tool utilized by many healthcare professionals called UpToDate. I will take the help of my external advisor (physician) to gain access to this evidence-based information and comprehensive content. The beauty of this application is how regularly updated it is and how all information is clearly sourced which will prove useful to me if I wish to lean deeper into a certain aspect of Plantar Fasciitis. Another thing I wish to briefly introduce is my future interviews which will be conducted after week 5. Before conducting these interviews, I hope to send out a quick google form with a few questions concerning symptoms, previous medical history, and medication history etc. I have started this google form and will start to finalize collecting all my potential interviewers by the end of next week.

I’m excited for the upcoming weeks of the project and will see you all next week : )