finger taping to protect pulley tendons
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- This topic has 10 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 19 years, 2 months ago by
John Knight.
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Di
Kinda cool, esp. for science nerds such as myself. The gist is that taping your fingers doesn’t protect your tendons:
Jon
haha Science Nerd!
I will be taping my delicate hands tonight after the beating they took on Tuesday. 🙂
Di
Science nerd, evil bouldering queen- make up your mind! See ya tonight, better work on another reachy problem for me! 🙂
Domhnall
It is unclear whether taping to prevent injury is useful in uninjured fingers, but if you have ruptured or strained a pulley, it forms an important part of conservative treatment of the injury (ref. Schoeffi-Hochholzer Grading System for pulley injuries, High Altitude Medicine and Biology, Vol.3.N1.p130.2002) and is supported by the medical evidince in these situations. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to prove or disprove its efficacy for prevention in previously uninjured pulleys as the size of cohort of climbers required to prove a statistically significant outcome difference would be impossible to recruit and effectively follow up. So, it is not that it does or doesn’t help in uninjured fingers, it is just that there is no way to prove it satisfactorily. Dr D
Domhnall
And I meant to add, the first study quoted while interesting, is unlikely to accurately reflect real life, as the study “patients” were cadavers, ie. dead! The only way to prove if it works is to have thousands of climbers split into two groups, one group who tape, and one who don’t, and record over time the incidence of injuries. The reason you need thousands is because the incidence of pulley injuries (ca 2-10% in a climbers lifetime) is low enough that to show a statistically significant difference in outcome requires big study numbers, and previous studies have not had enough power to do this.
Di
So would it then be a one-tailed or two-tailed t-test or would you need something non-parametric . . . .
Heheheh just lightening this up Domnhall! I fully agree with you that the test wasn’t the most scientifically valid- ‘real’ climbers would let go long before they reached that level of tendon failure, etc. etc. Just thought the article was interesting especially for my mates Liam and Jon who seem to have more tape than fingers! 🙂
Jon
Oi! 🙂
I find taping helps my bouldering – having said that I did rip myself some nice flappers this week so my hands are particularly sore and tender and a bit of tape doesn’t go astray 🙂 Might try to cut back my tape habit next week.
So why are you such a science nerd Di huhuh? I’m a bit of a science nerd myself (Marine Biologist).
Toc
I read that article, and also realized I wasn’t dead yet, so maybe it wasn’t totally applicable to me.
Part science nerd, part tradesman here and climber. The work I do, stresses my fingers almost as much as climbing. If you see me climbing with tape on my fingers, it’s because they hurt, and I would have been taping them for work as well. Guess what, they heal. Sample of one out of a population of one, (not dead yet), as far as I’m concerned if other live people don’t tape because it doesn’t help dead people, good luck to them, but it seems to work for me.
Cheers,
Toc.
John Knight
I don’t really agree with the way western science handles things, it’s usually a case of “if it hasn’t been proven in this experiment, then it’s not true”, and quite often it’s not the case, it just hasn’t been proven yet.
Domhnall
Should also point out that the reason I have time to write such boring posts is that I currently have a left ring finger A3 rupture thanks to a nasty dyno to crimp at Rockface, and am halfway through my two weeks of splinting!!! (vested interest, you see!). Oh, and Jon, Western medicine has been EXTREMELY non-scientific for most of its history, and only in the last ten years has true Evidence-Based-Medicine appeared. Most of what we have been doing is just done becuse, well, that’s what we’ve always done!!! (Old wives and mystics undoubtedly know lots of stuff, but it would be nice to prove them right too) D
John Knight
Couldn’t agree more, Domhnall. My finger’s knackered too btw, just did a 20 at the hangout last night though, I just taped the entire finger and practically imoblised it!
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