Ankle taping can improve proprioception in healthy volunteers

Taping is a common technique to treat inversion ankle sprains, but the effects of tape on proprioception are still not clear. The purpose of this study was to establish whether proprioception would be modified by the use of ankle tape. To do so we studied joint position sense (JPS) in healthy volunteers using three-dimensional (3D) movement analysis systems.

Forty healthy volunteers (mean age and SD = 23.2 ± 4.2) were asked to actively reproduce four different ankle positions: 10 degrees of dorsiflexion, neutral, 10 degrees and 20 degrees of plantarflexion. The absolute difference between the estimated angle and the target angle was used to assess JPS. This difference was named Error. Subjects were randomly assigned to the control (n = 21) or the intervention (n = 19) groups. Members of the intervention group received ankle tape for a lateral ligament sprain in the non-dominant leg. A t-test was used to evaluate the results.

Tape significantly improved JPS for the dorsiflexion position (p = 0.038). Neutral was the most accurately reproduced position, and the remaining positions were overestimated for both groups.

Taping improved proprioception in healthy volunteers, and 3D movement analysis was a useful method to accurately quantify joint position sense.

Because ankle proprioception is critical to the functional success of surgical and rehabilitation treatments, these results regarding proprioception are of particular importance because ankle taping is often used in preventing ankle sprains and it is a common treatment after ankle injuries.