Article Text
Abstract
Objectives To investigate the short-term clinical efficacy of in-shoe foot orthoses over a wait-and-see policy in the treatment of anterior knee pain (AKP) and evaluate the ability of foot posture measures to predict outcome.
Design Single-blind, randomised control trial.
Participants Forty participants (18–40 years) with clinically diagnosed AKP of greater than 6-week duration, who had not been treated with orthoses in the previous 5 years.
Intervention Prefabricated orthoses perceived as most comfortable from a selection of 3 different hardness values compared with a wait-and-see control group.
Outcome measures Participant-perceived global improvement, Kujala Patellofemoral Score, usual and worst pain severity over the previous week and the Patient Specific Functional Scale measures at 6 weeks.
Results Foot orthoses produced a significant global improvement compared with the control group (p = 0.008, relative risk reduction = 8.47%, numbers needed to treat = 2). Significant differences also occurred in measures of function (standardised mean difference = 0.71). Within the intervention group, individuals who exhibited a change in midfoot width from weight bearing to non-weight bearing of >11.25 mm were more likely to report a successful outcome (correct classification 77.8%).
Conclusion This is the first study to show orthoses provide greater improvements in AKP than a wait-and-see approach. Individuals with greater midfoot mobility are more likely to experience success from treatment.
Trial Registration ACTRN12611000492954
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
-
Funding KM is supported by the Australian Research Council. Financial support for this research was received from the Australian Research Council (Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant LP0668233).
-
Competing interests None.
-
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.