Heartbeat: Shockwaves felt through foot health team

November 14, 2019

Patients experiencing debilitating heel pain are being offered a shocking new treatment, thanks to help from the League of Friends charity.

Leading the new treatment, Clinical Lead Podiatrist Tom Calderbank explained “Plantar fasciitis is a condition where you have pain on the bottom of your foot, around your heel and arch. It makes up over 25 per cent of our caseload in the Biomechanics clinic. It’s estimated that it could affect up to 10 per cent of the UK population.

“Although conservative treatments including insoles, exercises or corticosteroid injection therapy can help the majority of patients we see, a significant number are left with excruciating pain if the treatment does not work.

“The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital has been offering shockwave therapy for some time. Many of our patients have been travelling out of our area to have this treatment. This led us to make a bid for funding from the League of Friends, to make a difference to our patients locally.

“Shockwave therapy has been evidenced to be both safe and cost effective.

Called Extracorporeal Shock wave therapy (ESWT), it is non-invasive. It uses inaudible, high energy sound waves to stimulate tissue repair. The treatment is delivered in four treatments of 10 minutes over four weeks.

“Our initial clinic proved so successful we’ve recently had to put on a second one every week to cater for the numbers of patients who need the treatment. Initial feedback from patients is excellent.”