When is plantar fascia surgery really necessary for runners? Well, that’s what we’re talking about today on the Doc On The Run Podcast.
If you have plantar fasciitis and you’re a runner, you probably have heel pain when you get up and step out of bed. And if that’s gone on for months and months and months and you tried icing, you’ve tried 
stretching, you’ve tried a couple of things and you’ve become frustrated, it actually starts to become pretty easy for your doctor to talk you into surgery. If you have been in that situation. If you’ve had plantar fasciitis for a long time and your doctor is trying to convince you need surgery, I want you to listen up. I exclusively treat runners and I have not done an endoscopic plantar fascia release surgery on a runner in more than a decade, so you should think about that for a second.
You have to remember, plantar fasciitis is one of the most common foot problems that leads people to see a podiatrist. It is also one of the most common running injuries, so it’s common all around. And surgery is also commonly offered as a solution. And the idea is like the doctor says, well, look, you’ve tried all this other stuff and it hasn’t worked.
Let’s just go ahead and do surgery and release the tension on the fascia. But that tension on the fascia actually imparts stability to your foot. And given that so many different running shoes talk about the inherent stability of the shoe of motion control, shoes of stability type shoes, all of that, you really need to think about whether or not you want to have some new excess ligamentous laxity or sort of extra stretch in your foot with a structure that is the biggest ligament in your foot.
If you run, you need some inherent stability in your foot or you have to have a custom orthotic or a shoe that actually makes up for that. So in short, don’t let a doctor just talk you into surgery on the plantar fascia unless you really have no other options. But there are lots of other options. Do your research, get a second opinion. Figure out what you really need to do and figure out why your plantar fasciitis isn’t getting better before you really start to consider surgery.
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