Association Between Foot Pain and High Heeled Shoes in Working Women

Abstract

Women have been wearing high heels for decades and they remain a must-have for females going out on the town or to the workplace every day. It causes prolonged pressure on the muscles, bones, and tissues of the feet and ankles, on the other hand, may cause chronic foot discomfort or abrupt injuries that need surgical intervention in the feet and ankle. Objective: To determine an association between foot pain and high-heeled shoes in working women. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to measure the prevalence of foot pain among females wearing heeled footwear, focusing only working women. A sample size of 285 was taken. Foot Health Status Questionnaire was used to collect data from the respondents from different areas of Lahore. The data was collected from office workers and school teachers. Considering inclusion and exclusion criteria. females were requested to participate. The questionnaire consisted of 13 questions that were used in this survey. The questionnaire had multiple options out of which only one option was to be selected which was nearest to representing their condition of foot. All the data was analyzed on SPSS (version 25) software. A scoring of 0-100 was used to calculate the results. Results: According to this study, a majority of 162 females had mild to moderate foot pain, 84.4% of females had foot pain and 15.6% of females had no pain. Foot pain had a statistically significant association with walking, climbing stairs, and doing work or activities, (P-value 0.000). Respondents having foot pain couldn’t do all the above activities normally. Restrictions and limitations were found among the respondents with foot pain. A P-value of less than 0.05 indicates that there is a significant association between the severity of foot pain and difficulties during work or activities of daily life Conclusions: The study concluded that there is very high prevalence of foot pain (96%) among females wearing high heels. Long term use of high heels significantly affects the foot health and activities of respondents.