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Hello,

I am new to podiatry arena so please forgive any errors i may make with its use. hopefully i'm posting this in the correct area. I am also currently a podiatry student so please forgive any ignorance and lack of understanding i may have :).

I have been trying to understand the link between heel spurs and plantar fasciitis. However i haven't been able to find any good articles online. i don't quite understand whether heel spurs are a cause of plantar fasciitis, are a result of plantar fasciitis, or a separate diagnosis/condition/cause of heel pain all together. Some articles i have read suggest that heel spurs do not necessarily lead to heel pain. While i have read that a patient with a heel spur is more likely to experience heel pain. Im just a bit confused of the relationship between heel spurs and plantar fasciitis / heel pain.

Thanks for any help.

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Apologies in advance for the shameless self promotion, but here is a short literature review on the subject from my blog on the very subject: http://sportspodiatryinfo.wordpress....al-heel-spurs/

Also several threads on here that have discussed it in detail.

There is no relationship between them:
Is a calcaneal spur in the plantar fascia?.
Heel spurs are non-entities; non-events; and insignificant findings.

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Craig Payne
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God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things - right now I am so far behind, I will never die.

When doing a plantar calcaneal spur excision surgery, the spur is always located superior (i.e. deep) to the origin of the plantar fascia on the plantar calcaneus. Therefore, it is likely the plantar calcaneal spur is caused by excessive tensile forces within the flexor digitorum brevis muscle rather than excessive tensile forces within the plantar fascia. In addition, even though a plantar calcaneal spur may be present in varying sizes in patients that I do a partial plantar fasciotomy on for chronic proximal plantar fasciitis, invariably, the heel pain almost immediately resolves after surgically transecting the medial half of the central component of the plantar aponeurosis. These clinical observations point to the heel spur not being a significant factor in the production of the vast majority of cases with plantar heel pain.

However, I have seen cases where I believe that the plantar calcaneal spur may have been large enough to cause cause some plantar heel pain (those spurs that are 10+ mm in anterior-posterior length and are readily palpable through the plantar heel area). Therefore, I wouldn't necessarily say there is no correlation between plantar heel pain and plantar calcaneal spurs but would say that there is likely only some slight correlation between the two.

Hope this helps.

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Sincerely,

Kevin

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Kevin A. Kirby, DPM
Adjunct Associate Professor
Department of Applied Biomechanics
California School of Podiatric Medicine at Samuel Merritt College

e-mail: kevinakirby@comcast.net

Private Practice:
107 Scripps Drive, Suite 200
Sacramento, CA 95825 USA
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Voice: (916) 925-8111 Fax: (916) 925-8136
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thanks alot for these responses, the link, article and explanations were very helpful.

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