In my clinic Kinesiotape is often used to help provide patients a proprioceptive response to accelerate healing. Often, Kinesiotape will be used to speed up the healing response on an affected tissue.
What does that mean? Bringing awareness to the affected area helps the person move (or not move) an injured area appropriately!
On skin, the Kinesio Tape pulls the upper layers of skin, creating more space between the dermis and the muscle. The space created is believed to relieve pressure on the lymph channels in the area between the muscle and the dermis, creating more space for lymph flow and thus better lymph drainage through an affected area.
Kinesio Tape also is felt to affect deeper tissues in the body. Increased space theoretically allows muscles greater contractility, which in turn pushes more fluid through the muscle, resulting in better muscle performance. The end results are believed to be reduced muscle fatigue, increase in range of motion, and better quality of muscle contraction.
Kinesio Tex Tape is used to improve joint alignment by affecting the muscles and fascia and can reduce poor function of a joint by influencing opposing muscle groups and joint mobility. [3]
In a recent study[1], 28 patients with chronic ankle instability were taped with kinesiotaping to improve their stability. Interestingly, the effect of the taping on the stability of the ankle through a dynamic postural stability index was negligible. BUT! The perceived stability DID improve.
In conclusion, this taping procedure did not improve postural control during a sagittal and frontal plane landing task in subjects with CAI. Perceived instability did improve and is considered an important treatment outcome, which indicates that taping could be considered as a treatment modality by clinicians.
What does this mean? According to this study individual study, at the end of the day the patient’s felt the KinesioTape helped their ankle.
Similarly, taping on the calf muscle improved walking patterns in health adults, but not necessarily because it changed the muscle movement. Instead, the awareness of the tape on the muscle brought awareness to the gait in a positive way [2].
KT does significantly shorten the duration of the LG activity during gait when applied 72 h in healthy adults.
[1]De Ridder R, Willems TM, Vanrenterghem J, Roosen P. Effect of tape on dynamic postural stability in subjects with chronic ankle instability. Int J Sports Med. Epub 2015 Feb 9.
[2[ Phys Ther Sport. 2014 Dec 23. pii: S1466-853X(14)00107-2. doi: 10.1016/j.ptsp.2014.12.002.
[3] http://www.medicinenet.com/kinesio_tape/page3.htm
