Investigating the Association between Hallux Valgus Severity and Plantar Fasciitis: A Dynamic Finite Element Analysis (LS-DYNA)

The primary purpose of this study was to examine any alterations in the biomechanical relationship between hallux valgus (HV) severity and plantar fasciitis (PF) before and after intervention, utilizing a dynamic finite element (FE) method. The second purpose of this study was to further investigate the rate of contribution of each region of the plantar fascia to the before and after intervention by the approach of after processing each node using FE analysis. A male Chinese participant (age: 28 years, height: 178 cm, weight: 65 kg) with HV was enlisted for the present study. An LS-DYNA dynamic solver was used to perform a simulation of the forefoot running stance phase (before and after intervention). The results show that before intervention of the metatarsal (MT) 1-5 and plantar fascia (PF) have higher Von-Mise’s stress than after intervention throughout the forefoot running stance phase. The findings suggest that HV severity affects the incidence of PFs. By reducing the severity of HV, plantar fascia stress can be effectively reduced. In addition, this study further observed a relationship between HV severity and PFs through FE after processing. HV severity seems to be the main cause of PFs.