I ALMOST never use kinesiotape in the clinic. I have a few reasons for that:

1. It is no better than sham taping (link, link)
2. It is passive (not exercise based)
3. It does not hold things together or change the position of structures (link)
4. I still have the arts and crafts skills of a 3rd grader…so I suck at it.

I think the evidence concluding that it is not better than sham indicates that it is not worth my time, but I do use it sometimes.

Over the last year I have probably used kinesiotape <5 times. I think 4 of those were because people out right asked for it without me mentioning a thing. In that scenario I’m going to ride the placebo train all the way to feel-betterville, while not over-promising anything. The one other time is what I want to talk about because I feel like it actually fits into my reasoning model, I just haven’t seen the type of patient enough.

Taping does have minor effects on pain (placebo?) and proprioception (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8231783). Which make sense because you are putting something on your skin, so your nervous system is feeling that thing and giving you more awareness of the aforementioned thing. In my practice this is helpful for one specific condition or classification.

I try to be as evidence-based as possible, therefore I use the McKenzie system to classify patients. For my thoughts on that go here. One of the classifications is Posture, which essentially means that the patient’s symptoms are aggravated only when they stay in a particular position of a long time. When they get out of that position, their symptoms go away. Abnormal stress on normal tissues. This is a fairly rare presentation to see in the clinic, hence the reason I have only used tape a few times. In the posture classification the only thing that aggravates the patient is a certain sustained posture…so I get them in the posture that takes their pain away (ie. chin tuck/ double chin, when having their chin way forward hurts their neck) and I put tape on them in a way that when they move into their provoking position it tensions. The tension on the tape/skin is felt by the patient and acts as a reminding for them to move out of that position.

This is a very helpful educational tool for patients. It is essentially like having me with them all day to say “hey move your neck, so it doesn’t start hurting.” Nothing magically there.

How do you use tape?