ReviewCureus2025
Conservative Management of Sever's Disease (Calcaneal Apophysitis): A Comprehensive Review of Treatment Efficacy.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sever's disease (calcaneal apophysitis) is a common cause of heel pain in physically active children. It results from repetitive stress on the calcaneal growth plate during adolescence. This literature review synthesizes evidence from 17 different peer-reviewed studies from PubMed using the terms "Sever's disease" and "calcaneal apophysitis." Approximately 243 articles were retrieved, and 17 met the inclusion criteria. The aim is to evaluate the efficacy of conservative treatments for Sever's disease. Key interventions include the use of custom-made foot orthoses, physical therapy (including heel cord stretching and dorsiflexion strengthening), non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), cryotherapy, heel lifts, kinesio taping, and extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT). Custom foot orthotics improved biomechanical alignment, outperforming off-the-shelf heel lifts. Physical therapy facilitated return to sport within two months. Kinesio taping enhanced function but showed comparable pain relief to placebo. Heel lifts provided short-term benefits, and ESWT showed promise but lacked robust evidence. NSAIDs and cryotherapy were effective for acute symptom management. A tiered treatment framework was developed, prioritizing custom orthoses and physical therapy (heel cord stretching and dorsiflexion strengthening) (Tier 1), followed by adjunctive therapies like heel lifts and kinesio taping (Tier 2), emerging treatments like ESWT (Tier 3), and non-recommended options such as off-the-shelf orthoses (Tier 4). Despite methodological limitations, such as small sample sizes and heterogeneous study designs, conservative treatments consistently alleviated pain and restored function in patients with Sever's disease. A proposed multicenter randomized controlled trial is recommended to compare custom orthoses, physical therapy, and ESWT over 12 months to standardize outcomes and clarify optimal treatment protocols.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.