Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine 51-10 | Page 17

Effect of kinesio taping in chronic non-specific low back pain
737
Additional records
identified through
other sources (n=11)
Records identified
through database
searching (n=192)
Duplicate citations
removed (n=53)
Records screened Records excluded
(n=150) (n=95)
Full text articles
assessed for
eligibility (n=55)
Full text articles excluded
(n=47):
Publication type (n=12)
Condition (n=13)
Intervention (n=12)
Outcomes/Comparison (n=10)
8 articles included
in analysis
Fig. 1. Flowchart of study selection for the meta-analysis.
compared with 252 patients in other conventional
therapy groups (WMD   = –1.22; 95% CI   = –1.49 to
–0.96; Fig. 3). In addition, sensitivity analysis sho-
wed that a significantly reduced VAS was found after
omitting all included studies one at a time (ranges of
WMD (95% CI): –1.30 (–1.58, –1.02) to –1.10 (–1.33,
–0.86), p < 0.001), demonstrating that the pooled VAS
result was stable (Fig. 4).
ODI assessment. All the studies reported the ODI
score, and significant heterogeneity was found among
these studies (p < 0.0001 and I 2  = 77%). Therefore, the
random effect model was used for merging ODI score.
The WMD for ODI was –7.11 (95% CI –8.70 to –5.51,
Fig. 5), indicating that KT had a more positive effect
on improving ADL than other methods of conventional
Fig. 2. Risk of bias assessment for the included studies. –: high risk of
bias; +: low risk of bias; ?: unclear risk of bias.
therapy. A stable ODI result was found by sensitivity
analysis after omitting the included studies one at a
time (ranges of WMD (95% CI) –7.51 (–9.17, –5.86)
to –6.20 (–7.37, –5.03), p < 0.001) (Fig. 6).
GRADE evidence
The overall confidence in the estimates of VAS and
ODI was low due to the risk of bias and inconsistency,
which may reduce the recommendation strength of the
pooled results (Table II).
Fig. 3. Forest plot of efficacy evaluation according to visual analogue scale (VAS) (kinesio tape vs other therapy groups). Squares indicate outcome
estimates for corresponding study, and the size of the square indicates the weight of the corresponding study. Horizontal lines and figures in parentheses
represent the 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Diamonds indicate the pooled effect size with the corresponding 95% CI. SD: standard deviation.
J Rehabil Med 51, 2019