Custom-made insoles may ease the certain foot pain

Tag : designed shoes
Custom-fit insoles may help ease footpain caused by high arches, rheumatoid arthritis and certain otherconditions, a research review suggests.
Australian researchers found that in 11 clinical trials,custom-designed orthotic devices for the shoes helped ease certainforms of foot pain. One study, for instance, showed that within 3months, the shoe inserts improved pain in adults with abnormallyhigh arches.
Another study, of 209 adults younger than 60, found that customorthoses eased pain from bunions -- though they did not appear tobe as effective as surgery in the long run.
Custom orthoses are shoe inserts that are prescribed by a doctorand designed based on an impression taken of the patient's feet.They are widely used, but few well-designed clinical trials havebeen done to confirm that the devices work.
The bottom line is that for a few forms of foot pain, customorthoses are better than no treatment at all, said Fiona Hawke ofthe University of Newcastle, the lead researcher of the review.
"It is, however, difficult to confidently recommend custom-madefoot orthoses over other interventions, as very little research hasbeen performed," she told Reuters Health.
Hawke and her colleagues report their findings in the CochraneLibrary, a publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, aninternational organization that evaluates medical research.
Besides showing promise for painful high arches and bunions, theresearchers found that custom orthoses may ease foot pain fromjuvenile idiopathic arthritis -- a form of arthritis that affectschildren. In these cases, though, it was not clear that customorthotics were any more effective than "off-the-shelf" shoeinserts.