This doesn't work by causing inflammation, but by releasing congestion or bone marrow oedema.
Reportedly originally done by some Egyptian doctors, when I taught surgery in China in 1983 they presented a study measuring preop and postop pressure in the calcaneus.
There was a positive correlation with the pressure drop and symptomatic relief.
No plantar fasciotomy or heel spur excision was done.
Now, of course, we can detect bone marrow oedema with MRI.
You can also squeeze the heel, like testing for Sever's disease.
Just a slight compression of the calcaneus (how much can you compress a bone, anyway) will cause pain.
This compression pain seems generally to follow after initial heel spur/plantar fasciitis symptoms.
Probably the long term inflammation.
I've noticed achilles tendonitis/calf pain seems to follow this, and then sometimes tarsal tunnel syndrome follows.
Originally, a circle of six holes was percutaneously drilled into the lateral calcaneus.
This caused a stress riser however, and there were some calcaneal fractures.
I've drilled two holes obliquely diverging from the excision of heel spur site, back into the body of the calcaneus.
I've had good results with this, but I also remove the heel spur and release the plantar fascia.
I've done this for over 20 yrs now, with no ill effects, and very good results.
From my experience, I think the decompression is actually more important than the heel spur excision, and indeed there has been some discussion that the actual causative effect of the heel spur excision is to make a break in the cortex so that the marrow can decompress.
Perhaps some of the failures with the dead simple endoscopic plantar fascial release were a result of this failure to remove the spur/decompress the calcaneus.
The recent fad of coblation is more akin to prolotherapy, increasing inflammation to cause the migration of multipotential mesenchymal cells to the site to reinforce the rupturing plantar fascia.
This is nothing new.
It's been used for at least a century on lame horses, by puncturing the affected tendon/ligament repeatedly with a heated needle to cause repair/strenghtening of the tendon/ligament.
It's called "pin firing," but is no longer legal in New Zealand because it's considered cruel.
Early-Term Functional Results for Combined Technique of
Calcaneal Spur Removal, Calcaneal Drilling, and Plantar
Fascia Release in Painful Heel Syndrome
Kayahan Karaytuğ, M.D. Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology Sarıkamıs State Hospital, Kars, Turkey Haydarpasa Numune Med J 2018;58(1):17–21