Morphological Characteristics of the Intrinsic Foot Muscles in Individuals With Flat Foot: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this meta-analysis was to discern the changes in morphological characteristics of the intrinsic foot muscles, including changes in the cross-sectional area (CSA) and thickness of the abductor hallucis (AbH), flexor hallucis brevis (FHB), flexor digitorum brevis (FDB), and abductor digiti minimi (AbDM) in individuals with flat foot (FF). METHODS: We conducted our literature search in the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus electronic databases. We included English-language case-control and cross-sectional studies comparing the morphological features of the intrinsic foot muscles in adults with and without FF. The methodological quality of the five studies that met the inclusion criteria was assessed with an adapted version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for cross-sectional studies. The mean difference (MD) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) was used to quantify the effects between adults with and without FF. RESULTS: The study included five studies, one of which was classified as high quality, while the remaining studies were classified as moderate quality. The CSA of the FHB (MD = -0.41, 95% CI = -0.61, -0.22; p < 0.001, I2:59%) and AbDM (MD = -0.21, 95% CI = -0.32, -0.11; p< 0.001; I2=1%) and the thickness of the AbDM (MD = -1.43, 95% CI = -1.81, -1.05; p< 0.001; I2=1%) were lower in individuals with FF than in the control group. However, the CSA of the AbH and FDB, and the thickness of the AbH, FHB, and FDB exhibited no significant differences between the FF and control groups. CONCLUSION: The results of our study indicate that individuals with FF exhibited significant atrophy of the FHB and AbDM muscles. However, the morphology of the AbH and FDB muscles did not appear to influence foot posture, based on the five studies that were considered.
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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 | 0.013 | 0.033 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.016 | 0.031 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
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".