Right Or Left: Laterality Incidence Of Billed Plantar Fasciitis Plus Foot Pain

BackgroundFootedness and its potential role still remains largely underexplored in terms of laterality of lower extremity diseases. Materials and MethodsPodiatric medicine patients electronic health/medical records were explored based on International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes billed from October 1, 2015-September 30, 2021 for pain in right foot (ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code M79.671) as well as for plantar fasciitis (ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code M72.2) vs. for pain in left foot (ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code M79.672) as well as for plantar fasciitis (ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code M72.2). ResultsDuring the six-year period, 1077 patients were only billed for pain in right foot vs. 921 patients were only billed for pain in left foot (p=0.0005) but only 362 patients with pain in right foot were concurrently billed for plantar fasciitis while only 372 patients with pain in left foot were concurrently billed for plantar fasciitis (p=0.71). ConclusionAlthough there was no significance difference between right vs. left plantar fasciitis incidence, the incidental finding of significant difference between right vs. left foot pain incidence warrants future investigations.