Figure-of-Eight Taping Combined with Rehabilitation for Multidirectional Shoulder Instability in a School-Age Female Karate Athlete: A Case Report.
Sohei Shimizu, Masashi Kawabata, Ryo Tazawa and 3 others
A 12-year-old karate athlete with multidirectional shoulder instability improved over five months of combined exercise therapy and taping, reaching 180° of flexion and resuming competition.
One patient, no control group, and taping was one of several components — no single treatment can be credited.
Key findings
1Over five months, active shoulder flexion improved from 85° to 180° and abduction from 70° to 170°; the Rowe score reached 80/100 and the SANE-Instability score reached 90%.
2Figure-of-eight taping was applied during the middle phase of rehabilitation to support exercise performance and was discontinued after two months, after which the patient continued to progress without it.
3The authors state that the taping was part of a multimodal rehabilitation program and its specific effects could not be separated from those of exercise therapy or other aspects of care.
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What it does not show
Single patient with no control group; the authors state it cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship between taping and the observed outcomes. Taping was one component of a multimodal program (scapular exercises, rotator-cuff exercises, closed-kinetic-chain exercises, core work, elastic-band work); its specific contribution cannot be separated from the exercise therapy. Follow-up was five months; the authors note the high recurrence rate of MDI with conservative therapy and call for long-term follow-up. Possible non-specific effects, including psychological reassurance and placebo-related effects, may have contributed to the improvement. No imaging (ultrasound or MRI) was performed to confirm a biomechanical mechanism for the taping effect.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The specific tape product (Daiwakan Kinesiology Tape, Daiwakan Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan) is named in the methods, but no funding or sponsorship relationship is disclosed.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that figure-of-eight taping treats multidirectional shoulder instability. It is one 12-year-old patient with no control group, the taping was one of at least five concurrent interventions (scapular exercises, rotator-cuff exercises, closed-kinetic-chain work, core exercises, elastic-band work), it was used for only two months, and the authors explicitly state its effect cannot be separated from the exercise program. The improvement could reflect the rehabilitation, the taping, the patient's maturation, or a combination, and the study design cannot tell you which.
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