“You’re not seeing the world as it is, you’re seeing the world in terms of your ability to act.” This is one of my favorite quotes in medical science and was made by Jessica Witt, professor for cognitive psychology. In the Müller-Lyer illusion shown in the title picture, perceived length can change by adding different arrows to the same line....

Autonomous Practice: The good news is that Physiotherapy is becoming an autonomous profession in more and more countries around the world. I understand that Physiotherapists in Switzerland are currently looking into the possibility of gaining direct access for the profession and congratulations have to go to Poland where our colleague Zbyszek Wronski had a large role to play in progressing...

self-treatment

It is the day after…. The day after Blue Monday. The, so called, most depressive day of the year. If you believe the story, everybody with great ideas/wishes for the coming year like losing weight, quit smoking, drinking less beer/wine have already given up hope in obtaining this goal. My wish for the next year, which I haven’t given up...

In a study recently published (Herzog, Elgort, Flanders, & Moley, 2017), the same patient, a woman, 63 years old, with a history of low back pain and L5 radicular symptoms in her right leg visited 10 different imaging centres in a period of three weeks. The findings of the MRI´s were compared to a reference exam (two of the...

 Hey guys! You all have a mobile phone, don’t you? Well! You’ll find here a few apps that might be of use in your daily work!   Nerve Whiz   Is there a neurological pattern you do not recognize? Can’t you remember which sensitive areas a nerve refers to? Do you need to have a look at the brachial plexus? Created by the Michigan University, Nerve Whiz...

SYMPHYSIS SYNDROME

Our Assumes related to clinical patterns and whose presentation are influenced through the constitution of the patient, the age of the patient, „norms“, which the therapist has learned, clinical patterns, the work eperience of the therapist and many many more factors. These factors are not very instincted if you are a beginner and have to evolve. If the work experience...

"Functional demonstration (FD)” Early in the P/E process, there is a point of “functional demonstration (FD)”. Let’s say our patient complains about the pain in the scapular region during rotation to the right. We can ask the patient to show us the movement (MVT). The 1st aim of FD is to get an asterisk. But if there is more than...

Lateral elbow pain; finding the pain driver? A need for dualistic reasoning! Lateral elbow pain and movement dysfunction has been subject to a great amount of studies with a wide variability of produced results (5,9). A vast number of local structures and local biomechanics have been accused of being the potential peripheral, structural, driver of symptoms, either through ultrasonographic differentiation...

Screening tests, more questions than answers? A whole series of different screening proposals are being used in musculoskeletal medicine for all sorts of different reasons. The offer goes from red flag screening to sports related pre-participation screening. Many of the screening tests are though not universally accepted and conflicting evidence is frequently found in literature (2). Below I’ve listed up some...

Palpation…passive movement exploration...Can you feel it? Palpation findings are being used by most health care professionals in search for anatomical landmarks, to evaluate and interpret a great variety of properties thought to be linked to tissues like skin, muscles and fascia, nerves, viscera, blood vessels, physiological and accessory joint movements looking for signs of tissue restrictions, and for symptom provocation. I...

Thanks to the IMTA research foundation, who support our work on two-point discrimination in the upper cervical spine, we are now in the middle of the data collection for this exciting research! The idea for this project was based on the quite robust evidence, that two-point discrimination as a marker for tactile acuity and potentially indicating the extent of cortical...

  Before you starting reading this blog, it has to be mentioned that it is restricted to the biomechanics of peripheral nerves. I hope it will give you some interesting thoughts for education and clinical work Education of the evaluation of the peripheral nervous system in musculoskeletal pain and disorders is a major part of IMTA courses-During the last decade other...

This Blog was written together by Jukka Kangas and Wouter Geerse. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSE to patho-anatomical changes and movement dysfunctions Physiotherapists are aware that structural changes in musculoskeletal system don’t correlate directly with pain or functional capacity. In scientific world it is widely accepted that people respond individually to patho-anatomical changes (O’Sullivan 2005, Kangas 2011) and they adopt very different...

Is Manual Therapy beneficial in nerve related neck & arm pain? CRITICALLY APPRAISED PAPER (CAP) Adapted & commented by Michaela Neubauer PT, OMT, M. Physio, IMTA teacher (International Maitland Teachers Association), lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten. Neubauer_Neural-tissue-management_CAP_20170901.pdf Manual therapy_sideglide_NeubauerManual therapy & movement_Neubauer.

In one of our recent courses we had an interesting observation during inspection. (see picture in the title) A marked atrophy of the pectoralis major muscle and absence of the nipple was found. The participant told that he had the “Poland syndrome”. For more information, feel free to look it up in Wikipedia. In his case it mainly affects the sternal portion, which tested...

Most physiotherapists will tell you that there are a number of clinical syndromes that they particularly like or dislike, for whatever reason. What is your favourite group of patients suffering from a musculoskeletal disorder that you like treating, and do you know why? Early on in my career I happened to stumble over a range of patients with stiff shoulders,...

Tendinopathies are problematic to manage clinically. People of different ages with tendons under diverse loads present with varying degrees of pain, irritability, and capacity to function. Recovery is similarly variable; some tendons recover with simple interventions, some remain resistant to all treatments. (Cook&Purdam 2009) The classic description of the tensile load-bearing region of tendon includes 3 main components (Scott et...