Shoe inserts may help ease plantar heel pain

Study: Prefabs work as well as custom-made

It could take a little time for orthotic shoe inserts to help relieve plantar heel pain, but the prefabricated versions sold in drugstores may work just as well as more expensive custom alternatives, a recent study suggests.

Plantar heel pain is one of the most common foot ailments, affecting about 4 percent of the population and an even higher proportion of elderly people and athletes, researchers noted online Sept. 21 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Many doctors recommend shoe inserts to ease this pain by supporting the arches and taking pressure off the heel, but research to date has been inconclusive about the effectiveness of this approach.

For the current study, researchers analyzed data from 19 previously published studies with a total of 1,660 participants. They found moderate-quality evidence that orthotic shoe inserts worked better than sham inserts at reducing pain after people had worn them for a bit — from about 7 to 12 weeks of use.

For this same time frame, customized orthotics appeared a bit better at easing pain than prefabricated versions, but the difference was too small to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance, the study also found.

“Our finding that foot orthoses can effectively reduce pain suggests that they are a valid treatment option for plantar heel pain,” said lead study author Glen Whittaker, a podiatry researcher at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia.

“Furthermore, because we found that contoured prefabricated foot orthoses are as effective for plantar heel pain as customized foot orthoses, prefabricated foot orthoses should be used initially rather than customized foot orthoses because they cost less and are immediately available,” Whittaker said by email.

Shoe inserts may reduce plantar heel pain by redistributing pressure away from the bottom of the heel to the arch, Whittaker said.