Podiatry Blog

Top of foot pain often presents as a diagnostic challenge, but most recently the Dorsal Interossoeus Compression Syndrome has been described as a entity and all of a sudden, it has become quite a common problem. Top of foot pain due to this occurs when there is greater dorsiflexion of the forefoot of the rearfoot and this results in some dorsal jamming of the midfoot joints producing the symptoms. Often in the past this may have been dismissed as “arthritis”. The treatment for top of foot pain caused by this is the use of foot orthotics to plantarflex the forefoot on the rearfoot, so that the dorsal jamming does not occur. Low dye strapping has also been suggested to be very effective at also doing this provided that the tape actually plantarflexes the forefoot on the rearfoot. Barefoot running is also a common cause of this and ‘top of foot pain’ is widely discussed on barefoot running websites. The common recommendation on these websites is to change running form in such a way to lesson that dorsal jamming in the midfoot.