Maybe Heel Spurs Are Important
For years you foot doctor has been telling all you heel pain patients that heel spurs are just an incidental finding on an x-ray and not a cause of pain. That opinion may have to change. A recent article in Foot and Ankle Specialist (April 2014) by doctors from Dublin, Ireland examined x-rays of 1103 consecutive foot pain patients and found heel spurs in 12% of them (more common in women). Those 12%, when compared to matched controls with no heel spur on their x-ray, had four times a muc diabetes, 10 times as much osteoarthritis and, in general. more foot pain, in general, than the controls. They did not go so far as to say the spur was the cause of pain, but, it did appear more often in patient who had foot pain (even excluding heel pain). Dr. Zapf’s comment was “This is very interesting — it makes the poor heel spur relevant, again”
