Flexibility is the latest word in hand therapy products, both in the sense of new materials that allow a greater range of motion, and in items patients can buy in drug stores or use in their homes as well as the therapist’s office.

“In the therapy world, we’re doing as much with home programs as we can,” says Lynn Festa, OTR, a certified hand therapist and editor of the American Society of Hand Therapists newsletter. Some years ago, she says, a patient might see a therapist three days a week for an hour at a time. But because of changes in insurance coverage, “we’re given a very limited amount of visits, so a lot more onus gets put on the patient” to do therapy exercises at home. To this end, therapists like products patients can buy for themselves in pharmacies, she says.

Newer, lighter materials allowing for greater mobility are being increasingly used by hand therapists and their patients, particularly for chronic ailments such as arthritis, says Julie Belkin, president of Maryland-based 3-Point Products, which sells a variety of hand therapy products, including splints and scar tissue massagers. Belkin is a former hand therapist who worked as a clinician for 20 years. She says baby boomers, who generally are more active than the generation before them but still prone to the aches and pains of aging, want support and compression for an injury or chronic condition, but also want to be mobile and able to do as many activities as possible.

Elastic therapeutic sports tape has become popular among many therapists and their patients, Festa says. The colorful, stretchy tape came into vogue in the U.S. after the 2008 Olympics, when people saw athletes wearing it. The tape is lighter and more flexible than traditional splint material. Though the few published studies on the use of tape do not show any clear advantage for it in terms of pain relief or healing over traditional splint material, Festa says patients like it because it allows more mobility and they can wear it in the shower. The tape is sold in pharmacies in Japan, she says, and she expects it soon will be widely available in the U.S.

Therapists also are using newer, lighter materials for casts and splints, Festa says. Functional casts, such as BSN Medical’s Delta-Cast Conformable are made of a knitted polyester fabric, imbued with a clear resin. They are heavier and more supportive than a splint but allow for more function and comfort than traditional fiberglass cast, Festa says. “I think we’ll definitely see more of it as it catches on.” BSN also makes a semi-rigid, removable nonfiberglass cast tape called Delta-Cast Soft that “reduces some of the problems of rigid immobilization, such as muscle atrophy,” according to BSN’s product website.

Belkin’s company recently has introduced a new line of soft thumb and wrist splints and wraps that allow more mobility than previous versions. “There are reasons to wear a molded splint that completely eliminates mobility,” she says. “But it’s very hard to wear a rigid splint and function.” The softer, lighter materials provide needed support and compression, she says, but they don’t limit mobility as much, which may encourage patients to wear them. “No splint that’s sitting in your drawer is doing you any good,” Belkin says.

Silicone gel sheeting, also called scar gel pads, has been used by therapists since the mid-1980s to soften and flatten scars that can inhibit hand motion and flexibility, but the material now is cheaper and much more widely available to patients and therapists, Festa says. When it first came out, it had to be ordered from a manufacturer or supply company, but now can be purchased in a pharmacy.

The sheeting also comes in more convenient forms, including a cloth-lined version that Belkin’s company offers. The cloth allows patients to wear clothes over the sheeting without having them stick to it, Festa says.

Some new products involve using basic materials in new ways. Carolyn Barnes, OTR/L, CHT, invented Puttycise after one of her patients expressed frustration about not being able to unscrew the lid on a coffee container. She came up with a variety of tools that can be pushed into therapeutic putty — a hand therapy staple for many years — to mimic a range of daily activities, such as opening jars or turning keys. Patients build up strength in their hands by pushing or twisting the tools into different colored putties with increasing levels of resistance.

“The tools really expand what you’re able to do with the putty,” Barnes says. She now sells Puttycise mostly to therapists for use in their offices, but is planning a line for home exercise programs. Like Festa, she sees home products and programs as the wave of the future. “As hand therapists,” she says, “we have to use home exercise programs much more frequently than we did in the past.” •

Cathryn Domrose is a freelance writer.