Rationales and Evidence of Elastic Taping: A clinician’s per-spective

The effectiveness of Kinesio Taping® for pain management in knee osteoarthritis: a randomized, double-blind, controlled clinical trial

“…Taping the skin with some stretch in a certain direction changes the shearing of the skin and fascial layers and increases the afferent stimulation. 25 The more significant long-term pain-relieving effect in KO of KT applications with tension in comparison with those without tension applications was also reported by Castrogiovanni and colleagues. 27…”

“…Taping the skin with some stretch in a certain direction changes the shearing of the skin and fascial layers and increases the afferent stimulation. 25 The more significant long-term pain-relieving effect in KO of KT applications with tension in comparison with those without tension applications was also reported by Castrogiovanni and colleagues. 27 The more significant pain relief by KT during activities in comparison with the pain relief at rest or night, which was observed in our study and was reported by other researchers as well, 9,18 can be partly explained by the fact that about 50% of interstitial dynamic mechanoreceptors have a high threshold and a sufficient amount of stretch is required to activate them.…”

“…It has been proposed that taping over the skin can stimulate cutaneous mechanoreceptors and increase afferent feedback to the central nervous system resulting in decreased pain. 24,25 Pamuk and Yucesoy, who used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis to visualize deformations within the whole limb after the application of Kinesio tape over the skin along the tibialis anterior muscle and the dorsal aspect of the foot using approximately 50% of stretch, found that KT mechanically affects not only the targeted tissues, but also the deeper layers, and causes heterogeneous deformations within the whole limb. 26 Dynamic mechanoreceptors, such as Ruffini corpuscles and interstitial receptors, are localized in the border zones of the soft-tissue layers.…”

“…It has been proposed that taping over the skin can stimulate cutaneous mechanoreceptors and increase afferent feedback to the central nervous system resulting in decreased pain. 24,25 Pamuk and Yucesoy, who used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis to visualize deformations within the (a) Changes in NSAID usage for those participants who used them for knee-pain relief prior to participation in the study; (b) changes in analgesic medication usage for those participants who were nonusers of drugs for their knee-pain relief prior to participation in the study. KT, Kinesio Taping; NT, nonspecific taping; V1, assessment after taping month; V2, follow-up assessment.…”

The effectiveness of Kinesio Taping® for mobility and functioning improvement in knee osteoarthritis: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial

“…Based on our results, it could be hypothesized that even a smaller proprioceptive stimulation from knee area, provided by a non-specific taping application, was enough to slightly reduce pain, 18 improve proprioception, 31 , 32 and lead to clinically meaningful positive changes in function. It should not be disregarded that another possible reason for similar results on functioning and mobility in both groups of our study could be implied by a ceiling effect: the more advanced knee osteoarthritis is, the older the patient is, the more concomitant diseases are present, the less improvement in knee ROM and in other mobility outcomes is realistic.…”