Acute effect of kinesiotaping on pain, balance and gait performance in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A randomized controlled study.
BACKGROUND
Kinesiotape application is one of the non-pharmacological methods frequently used in patients with knee OA. Guidelines do not have a consensus on its use in knee osteoarthritis (OA).


OBJECTIVE
In this study, we aimed to investigate the acute effect of kinesiotape application on pain, balance, and gait performance in patients with knee OA.


METHODS
We included 164 patients with grade 1-3 knee OA according to the Kellgren-Lawrence staging system in the study. Patients were evaluated with visual analog scale (VAS), 10-meter walking test (10MeWT), timed-up and go test (TUG-T), single leg stance test (SLST), and functional reach test (FRT) before and after taping.


RESULTS
There was a significant improvement in the post-taping scores of all evaluation parameters in the kinesiotaping group compared with pre-taping scores. Statistically significant improvement was found in all scores of evaluated parameters except FRT scores in the placebo taping group. We found a significant superiority in the mean recovery scores of the kinesiotaping group compared to the placebo-taping group in all parameters except for 10MeWT.


CONCLUSIONS
We found significant improvements in both groups. The mean improvement levels in pain and balance scores were better in the KT group than in the PT group.