Brace or sports tape: Which works for knee pain?
Hello
People try all manner of things to alleviate their knee pain before they come to us for a permanent solution.
Some try painkillers or anti-inflammatory drugs.Others try braces or sports tap. Today we will look at the evidence for theeffectiveness of taping and bracingfor knee pain.
This weeks study is called “Patellar taping and bracing for the treatment of chronic knee pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis.”
A systematic review is the strongest, most reliable evidence there is.
It is when they look at many studies on the same topic and extract the conclusion of all of them. Like how asking everyone around an incident that happens gives you a better picture than asking one person.
In the study they looked at “16 eligible trials, 13 investigated patellar taping or bracing effects in individuals with anterior knee pain, and 3 investigated taping effects in individuals with knee osteoarthritis (OA).”
They found that” On a 100-mm scale, tape applied to exert a medially directed force on the patella decreased chronic knee pain compared with no tape by 16.1 mm, and sham tape by 10.9 mm”. So if your pain was ten out of ten, putting the tape on reduced it to 8.4.
Note: Fake tape worked almost as well indicating to me that its effect is almost all placebo.
For a 16% difference that only works when I use it.
Doesn’t sound like the problem is fixed,just slightly less bad, for now.
For bracing they found that” There was disputable evidence from low-quality studies for patellar bracing benefits.”
Furthermore they add “There was limited evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of patellar bracing.”
Knowing all this, that sports tape and bracing only works when its on, and that shame or fake sports tape is roughly 66% as effective as the real thing, does that sound like an effective permanent solution? Or do you want to try something else?
Jason
