The influence of athletic taping and bracing on ankle sprain: A literature review

Abstract

Ankle sprain is a common injury in sports, and it is considered one of the most body parts injured in athletes. An inversion ankle sprain is the most common type of ankle sprains injuries and constitutes 45% of sports injuries with a high recurrence level that could approximately affect 73% of athletes. This literature review is aimed to highlight the influence of the athletic taping and bracing on the athletic ankle sprains. Literature search was carried out using PubMed, SIMMON, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar. Athletic taping and bracing have been used for athletes with the purpose of injury prevention and as treatment during sporting activities. However, some studies showed ankle sprain injury reduction significantly up to half of the injury rate while using athletic tape. Furthermore, wearing the brace significantly lowers the injury rate of 1.6 sprains/1000 exposure comparing to 5.2 sprains/1000 exposure to those who did not wear the brace. Finally, athletic taping and bracing are common modalities used in practice. There is a lot of confounding factors and doubt in the literature regarding the influence of these modalities on the incidence and severity of injurers.