A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Physical Therapy With Independent Home Stretching for Plantar Fasciitis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although formal physical therapy (PT) is effective in treating plantar fasciitis (PF), it is unclear how this compares with home-based plantar fascia stretching (HS). METHODS: Fifty-seven patients with PF were enrolled in a prospective randomized trial comparing PT with HS. Visual analog scale (VAS), Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM), and Short Form (36) Health Survey (SF-36) scores were analyzed at 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year. RESULTS: At 6 months, VAS improved in both HS (35% decrease; P < 0.001) and PT (26% decrease; P = 0.002) relative to baseline. FAAM Activities of Daily Living scores improved 13.0% (P = 0.005) in HS and 21.3% (P < 0.001) in PT at 6 months relative to baseline. The SF-36 Physical Component Summary Scores demonstrated improvement at all time points in both groups. There were no notable intergroup differences in VAS, FAAM, or SF-36 at any time point. DICUSSION: The clinical outcomes of a home stretching protocol and PT did not markedly differ for the treatment of PF. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic Level I.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".