Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Context: Instrument Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM) and massage therapy are manual techniques that claim to be able to increase blood flow to treated areas. There are no studies on human subjects that have directly investigated the effects of IASTM on blood flow. Objective: To compare the effects of Graston Technique (GT) and Massage therapy on calf blood flow, using skin temperature measures (a valid, indirect measureof blood flow), on the lower leg. Design: Single-blinded prospective, longitudinal, controlled, repeated-measures design. Setting: Research Laboratory Participants: 28 volunteers participated in the study (Age=23±3; Males=14/28 (50%); Females=14/28 (50%); Girth=39.5±4.3l; Skinfold=27.9±5.6) Interventions: Each participant received 10-minute treatment (Massage and IASTM) in two separate sessions with the non-treatment leg used as a control. Main Outcome Measures: We measured baseline skin temperature on the calf prior to treatment, and again every 5min after treatment for a total of 60min. We evaluated differences between conditions (4) and time (13) with a repeated measures ANOVA. Significance was set at p<0.05 a-priori. Results: We identified significant differences with Greenhouse-Geisser corrections between conditions (F2.4,61.2=39.252, p<0.001, ES=0.602) and time (F2.1,54.4=192.8, p<0.001, ES=0.881), but failed to achieve a significant main effect (F2.1,53.5=2.944, p=0.060, 1-β=0.558). The massage condition (32.05±0.16°C) yielded significantly higher skin temperatures as compared to the massage control (30.53±0.14°C, p<0.001), GT (31.11±0.20, p<0.001), and GT control (30.32±0.14,p<0.001) conditions. Only the control conditions were not significantly different from one another (p=0.189). We also identified significant differences in time, whereas the baseline (25.83±0.30°C) acquired prior to treatment was significantly lower than all other temperature measurements (p<0.001). Moreover, temperatures at 5min (30.21±0.12°C), 10min (31.00±0.30°C), and 15min (31.65±0.12°C) showed significant increases (p<0.001). After 15min, the skin temperatures continued to rise and each time point was statistically different from the baseline and up to the 25min peak temperature (31.76±0.12°C), but these differences were not clinically significant differences (<0.80°C). Conclusion: This study demonstrated that massage and GT increase skin temperature. A rise in temperature theoretically indicates an increase in blood flow to the area. Blood flow increases theoretically stimulate the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to tissues in the body, increase tissue mobility, and increase muscle flexibility. Massage had a higher temperature increase when compared to GT, but both techniques increased temperature consistently for up to 25min post treatment. Further research is needed to conclude how deep this temperature and blood flow increase is occurring in the muscle tissue. If a clinician's therapeutic goal is to increase temperature and blood flow, both massage and GT would be good treatment choices with massage yielding significantly higher temperature and blood flow.

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