Systematic review shows no strong evidence regarding the use of elastic taping for pain improvement in patients with primary knee osteoarthritis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A recent trend in the field of primary knee osteoarthritis suggests that elastic tape (e.g., K-tape) relieves pressure on the joint by increasing tension on fascia. Elastic tape (ET) is expected to decrease pain and help patients to recover faster. OBJECTIVE: This systematic review aims to analyze the efficacy of this method on pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis by using The Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score. DATA SOURCES: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) standard for reporting systematic reviews of qualitative and quantitative evidence, we used 3 electronic databases, PubMed, Cochrane, and EBSCO, and grey literature was included. STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: Articles were screened for duplicates, screened for inclusion and exclusion criteria, and critically appraised. PARTICIPANTS AND INTERVENTION: People older than 45 years old with primary osteoarthritis (OA) and application of ET. STUDY APPRAISAL AND SYNTHESIS METHODS: 2005 Oxford standard. RESULTS: Amongst all the papers found, 6 Randomized Control Trials (RCT) for a total of 392 participants met the criteria and were included in our review. Three papers out of the 6 RCT had low risks of bias. When the ET was compared to sham taping, the results show no to moderate decreases of WOMAC scores in patients with primary knee osteoarthritis. LIMITATIONS: We focused on a single index test (WOMAC) and could not perform meta-analyses. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS OF KEY FINDINGS: Although ET does not provide strong adverse outcomes, our data do not support the use of ET as a treatment alone because of too slight reductions of the WOMAC score for reaching clinical efficiency. Thus, our systematic review shows no strong evidence regarding the use of elastic taping for pain improvement in patients with primary knee osteoarthritis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.040 | 0.190 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.012 | 0.019 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".