Interesting Case #1 – Rib Injury

The first of the ‘Interesting Case Studies’ series is kicked off with my own horse (don’t we all just want to wrap them in bubble wrap!).

When Ronan was approximately 18 months old he managed to injure the right hand side of his rib cage. He tore through the superficial layers of muscling and some minor damage was done to the intercostal muscles. He had both internal and external stitches, luckily the wound itself healed well and with the use of red light therapy the amount of scar tissue that had developed was less than expected.

However, months later, I noticed that he had slightly restricted rib movement on the right hand side when breathing, as well as reacting to palpation along the shelf of the rib cage on this side.

After bodywork was completed I decided to try kinesio tape to see if it would further assist in developing more even rib movement. The red tape was applied along the shelf of the rib cage on both sides, as well as another strip along the scar. This was applied using the facia release technique. The yellow tape was applied following the direction of the ribs, using 30% stretch to ‘recoil’ the ribs out and up.

The results really surprised me. Two days after application the reactivity to palpation along the shelf of the rib cage disappeared, rib motion was almost even both sides and the scar tissue under the scar had ‘softened’.