MUSCLE ENERGY TECHNIQUE VERSUS PASSIVE MANUAL SOFT TISSUE THERAPIES ON PLANTER FASCIITIS: A SYSTEMIC REVIEW

Aims of Study: Planter fasciitis (PF) is a common cause of heel pain. Muscle energy technique (METs) and passive soft tissue therapies are widely used for its management. The objective of this review was to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of METs and passive soft tissue therapies on PF. Methodology: An extensive electronic literature search was made using different databases and search engines. Studies regarding METs and soft tissues therapies were investigated according to the eligibility criteria, using extracted data form and assessed for risk of bias. Outcome measures were pain and functional status. Quality assessment was done with Downs and Black, Cochrane risk of bias tool, PEDro scale and Critical Appraisal Skill Program (CASP) tool. Results: Five articles met the selection criteria, were systematically reviewed for quantitative synthesis on comparative effects of METs and passive soft tissue therapies on PF. The quality of studies was moderate to high. Limitations and Future Implications: Less evidence on desired interventions and outcome measures was the limitation. Relative efficacy helps in clinical decision making and improve patient’s related outcomes. Originality: This review is the independent creation of authors. Conclusion: Manual soft tissue techniques are more effective than METs on improving pain and function in planter fasciitis.

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Differences in Language Use by Men and Women Bloggers of English E- Newspapers in Pakistan

This study aimed at analysing differences between the language use of men and women bloggers of Pakistani English e-newspapers. The corpus-based analysis compared two gendered corpora comprising a total of 11258 blog posts (6706 blog posts from 1674 men bloggers and 4552 blog posts from 1212 women bloggers) collected from blogs maintained by leading English e-newspapers of Pakistan. The data was collected from November 01, 2008 to August 31, 2015. Using 2015-version of the automated text analysis tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), the study employed a quantitative top-down approach for obtaining results for 93 in-built language analysis categories of LIWC2015. The software processes each word in a text file, matches it to in-built dictionaries for 93 variables and groups results under several major categories with many sub-categories. The computed results were processed for statistical analysis with XLSTAT (Addinsoft, 2016) and MS Excel for normality test, two-tailed hypothesis test, Bonferroni’s correction, and effect sizes. These tests were used to see statistically significant differences in gendered language use across 93 LIWC2015 variables. Besides, the study used AntConc 3.4.4 (Anthony, 2016), a stand-alone text analysis and concordancing toolkit, to note additional findings for differences in language use between men and women bloggers by comparing concordances, collocations and frequencies of selected expressions captured by LIWC2015 dictionaries. As a result, several gender differences in language use emerged. Many of these were consistent with the previous research conducted in other cultures and settings.