KT tape may not be as useful for joint, muscle pain

Kinesio taping – also known as KT tape – may reduce joint and muscle pain in the short term, but an overview of systematic reviews has shown that the evidence is highly inconclusive.

KT tape could reduce pain intensity in the immediate and short term (Hedges G −0.69 and −0.57, respectively) and also improve function and disability immediately (Hedges G −0.54), but the evidence was not definitive, Xiaoyan Zheng, PhD, of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues reported.

And inconclusive evidence showed that the treatment had only a modest effect on pain intensity in the short and medium term, function and disability in the short and medium term, and muscle strength and range of motion, they noted. In bmj.

“Kinesio taping is widely used in clinical practice, yet the evidence base remains conflicting,” Zheng reported. Medpage Today In an email.

Zheng said previous systematic reviews focused only on statistical significance, without asking whether the effects were actually meaningful to patients. They said those reviews were also not optimal considering the quality of the evidence or the potential for overlapping and low-quality studies.

“The current research addresses these gaps by providing a comprehensive overview of both published and unpublished systematic reviews, assessing methodological quality, and evaluating clinical relevance across different follow-up periods,” Zheng said.

“This is especially important now because physicians and patients need clear, reliable guidance about whether KT provides real benefit beyond placebo or short-term relief,” he said.

Russell Camhi, DO, a primary care sports medicine physician at Northwell Orthopedics in New York, who was not involved in the study, tells SELF. Medpage Today An email said the findings were in line with expectations.

KT tape “may sometimes be effective in helping reduce pain,” Camhi said, but it was “not surprising that the results were variable and overall showed that KT does not significantly reduce pain.”

KT taping was first invented in the 1970s. The idea is that applying it to the skin with sufficient tension can lift the skin, stimulate sensory receptors, promote proprioception and increase local blood circulation.

Camhi explained that a therapist or physical therapist “positions the inactive part of the body into its proper alignment and then applies tape.” Then, “(i)f and when a body part moves out of its correct alignment, the tape comes under tension, providing the patient with sensory feedback that allows them to correct their posture.”

Camhi believes that the systematic review explores the secondary effects of KT rather than its “primary role” of providing “proprioceptive feedback”.

The researchers reported that Zheng and colleagues’ review showed that the most common adverse events related to KT tape were skin irritation (40%) and itching (30%), the number needed to cause harm (NNH) was 173 for skin irritation and 356 for itching.

Overall, they included 128 systematic reviews (73 published and 55 registered, as yet unpublished) involving 15,812 participants from 310 randomized clinical trials in their research.

Many reviews focused on lower extremity conditions (45%) and reported pain intensity (89%). Most were assessed as critically low in methodological quality (78%) and low in risk of bias (58%). The average overall compliance rate in reporting quality was 75.6%.

The researchers said the study was limited because it only considered reviews of trials published in English, limiting its generalizability.

Nevertheless, they concluded that their findings suggest that KT tape “may provide benefit in the immediate term,” as it likely comes from “mechanical support for the subcutaneous space,” which “is likely to disappear once the tape is removed, making it difficult to maintain the effect in the short or medium term.”

Ultimately, “clinicians should be aware that the evidence for KT is very uncertain overall, and most benefits, where they exist, appear to be limited to short-term outcomes,” Zheng said. Additionally, “KT should not be seen as a substitute for active interventions such as exercise, for which there is generally strong evidence.”

Additionally, physicians should “discuss realistic expectations with patients, including the possibility of only short-term relief and the possibility of adverse events such as skin irritation or itching,” Zheng said.

Furthermore, “shared decision-making is important – patients’ preferences and values ​​should be considered along with the limitations of the current evidence,” Zheng said. “Given the low methodological quality of most existing reviews, physicians should interpret even published systematic reviews on this topic with caution.”