acupuncture treatment for plantar fasciitis a randomized controlled trial with six months follow-up针灸治疗足底筋膜炎的随机对照试验6个月随访.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2011, Article ID 154108, 10 pages doi:10.1093/ecam/nep186 Original Article Acupuncture Treatment for Plantar Fasciitis: A Randomized Controlled Trial with Six Months Follow-Up Shi Ping Zhang,1 Tsui-Pik Yip,1 and Qiu-Shi Li1, 2 1 School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China 2 Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China Correspondence should be addressed to Shi Ping Zhang, spzhang@.hk Received 9 April 2009; Accepted 15 October 2009 Copyright © 2011 Shi Ping Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Plantar fasciitis is a common cause of heel pain. It has been suggested that some acupoints have a specific effect on heel pain. The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy and specificity of acupuncture treatment for plantar fasciitis. Subjects were randomly assigned to the treatment group (n = 28) or control group (n = 25). The treatment group received needling at the acupoint PC 7, which is purported to have a specific effect for heel pain. The control group received needling at the acupoint Hegu (LI 4), which has analgesic properties. Treatment was administered five times a week for 2 weeks, with an identical method of manual needling applied to the two acupoints. The primary outcome measure was morning pain on a 100-point visual analog scale (VAS) at one month post-treatment. Secondary outcome measures included a VAS for activity pain, overall pain rating as well as pressure pain threshold using algometry. Significant differ