After treatment, you can walk right away and return to your normal activities right away, including going back to work. Even with simple surgical treatment for plantar fasciitis, your body still needs time to recover. During this time, you should modify your usual activities to facilitate healing. Depending on the type of surgery, the recovery time can range from six weeks to three months, during which time you should avoid strenuous physical activity and use a walking assistance device.
With ESWT, recovery time is minimal. You can leave the office after treatment without assistive devices and in your usual shoes. You may need to avoid any particularly strenuous or high-impact exercise for 48 hours after treatment, but otherwise, you can usually resume your normal activities, including returning to work, right away. Feet For Life centers have the most proven and effective Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy (ESWT) machines.
Shockwave therapy was originally developed in the late 1990s to help urologists treat kidney stones non-invasively. Another theory is that microtrauma induced by sound waves boost the body's healing process, which improves circulation and promotes the formation of new blood vessels in the affected area. Radial shockwave therapy, or low-energy shockwave therapy, uses a slow pulse and low energy density to treat superficial symptoms in a larger treatment area. Research is still being done to determine the effectiveness of shockwave therapy, but the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) believes it is safe.
Most patients require three shockwave therapy sessions, each one a week apart, before significant pain relief is noticed. Shockwave therapy is an innovative therapy that can treat specific bone, joint, muscle, tendon and ligament pain. While shockwave therapy is not always offered as a standalone treatment, there are many patients at the Sydney Heel Pain Clinic who will receive it in addition to other treatments. Shockwave therapy is a non-invasive, non-surgical treatment, but you may feel some pain or discomfort in the treatment area during the procedure.
Shockwave therapy has a long history of being an alternative treatment for plantar fasciitis before resorting to surgery, which has a long recovery time and carries the risk of complications. Extracorporeal shock wave therapy for plantar fasciitis is a technique that involves creating high-energy shock waves with a special machine that uses electromagnetic pulses (in the case of focused shock wave therapy) or pressurized air. The ultrasound imaging system provides a live “picture” of the inside of the foot to indicate the exact treatment site where the shock waves are being emitted. While some professionals use shock wave therapy as a standalone treatment, at the Sydney Heel Pain Clinic, the treatment plan includes measures that strengthen the Achilles tendon or plantar fascia and also eliminate the causes of pain.
The shockwave therapy machine is used, in addition to the treatment plan, for those patients who want immediate pain relief and reduced recovery time. During treatment, shock waves are concentrated at the point of maximum sensitivity of the heel, as it is bombarded with high-intensity sound waves. Shockwave treatment with ESWT grew out of an earlier technique called lithotripsy, which used sound waves to break down kidney stones and remove them from the body without pain when urinating.