Abstract
Physiotherapy is a challenging work from psychical as well as physical point of view. Due to their working load, many physiotherapists encounter problems with locomotor apparatus and their hands are overloaded in particular.
According to various authors (13,18) thumbs are particularly overburdened. The main purpose of this research therefore concerned comparison of metacarpal joint pain of the thumb (further MCP) with and without kinesio taping.
Objectification of the results was simultaneously evaluated by a grip difference by measured a hand dynamometer. Methodology: The group included 14 female physiotherapists at the age of 25 to 32 years (mean age 29.3).
All of them were employed at the same workplace, which guaranteed the same duration of the work shift and similar content of the work. Each therapist was required to cope with 73 patients weekly, individual mostly manual therapies lasted 30 minutes.
The probands were divided in two groups, 7 persons each based on whether they experienced or did not encounter pains of the MCP joints of the thumb, wrist and elbow. In the course of 14 day working cycle, the grip strength was repeatedly measured by a hand dynamometer at the beginning and at the end of each working day.
Each probands simultaneously recorded the degree of experienced pain in a standardized questionnaire Numeric Pain Rating Scale (NPRS) on the scale 1-10 (0=no pain, 7-10=great pain). In the course of the research the authors collected 12824 data concerning soreness and 560 values of the recorded strength, which were than statistically processed and evaluated by the paired t-test., Wilcoxon test and Pearson correlation coefficient.
Results and conclusion: The results revealed that using kineso taping prevents a decrease in the grip strength at the end of the working day not only in the group feeling pain of at work, but also in the group in which such pain was not encountered. We the demonstrated a decrease of the pain in MCP joint of the thumb in the course of the work and afterwards in both groups under observation.
The importance of the kinesio taping is therefore curative as well as preventive.