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What Manual Therapy Can and Can’t Do

This article was published on: 11/14/22 8:09 AM

What is Manual Therapy?

Manual therapy is a subspecialty of physical therapy that treats pain, loss of function, and wellness by combining manual examination and treatment techniques with exercise, patient education, and other physical therapy modalities. Manual therapy can be a significant part of the treatment as manual techniques are a part of the treatment protocol. It is critical to have a good exercise routine after your injury surgery period; otherwise, the results may be temporary. The OMPT ( Orthopedic Manual Physical Therapy) therapist’s practice revolves around manual therapy, which is a combination of exercises and patient education. Patients may experience pain during manual therapy sessions. So, before therapists begin working with patients, they have the patient examination, communication, and decision-making skills that are built on professional foundations and scientific education to provide effective and efficient care. Practitioners provide the best patient management, consult with other healthcare providers about simple and complex conditions, and provide health and wellness interventions. Generally, manual therapy has three types of therapeutic effects such as:

1. Biomechanical and physical aid in tissue modeling and repair.
2. Physiological helps to examine the positive placebo response.
3. Psychological helps to give relief from pain, reduced periarticular or intraarticular pressure, reduction of nociceptive activities, etc.

What Can Manual Therapy Do?

Manual Therapy is a type of therapy in which the therapist customizes the treatment for patients. Generally before starting the therapy therapist have to customize it to the individual patient’s condition, it is a very personalized form of treatment. Manual therapy has specific techniques that include soft tissue mobilization, strain-counter strain, therapeutic massage, joint mobilization, and muscle energy methods. The only motive of this therapy is to provide treatment using natural movements of the patient body to restore functionality and give relief from the pain. Here you can see some manual therapy can do such as:

• Increasing blood flow by moving and stimulating the injured area of your body, helps to deliver nutrient-rich blood to the injured area to help the healing process.
• The therapist will help you in improving the range of motion and mobility, by using very gentle movements of your body to activate joints and soft tissue. It also helps in restoring functionality.
• The therapist can fuel a relaxation response from muscles that are frequently tense and spastic.
• In soft tissue mobilization, your therapist aims to break down the adhesions that are causing inflammation or mobility issues. The therapist uses techniques such as deep friction massage, unlocking spiral motions, perpendicular strumming, rhythmic oscillations, etc.
• Scar mobilization aims to use scar tissues that typically develop in an injured area after surgery, fracture, or a sprain.
• Joint mobilization is a technique that improves the range of motion and alleviates muscle pain or tension in your body. That includes a mild, extended stretch or oscillation in a pain-free range.
• Joint manipulation is an advanced technique that is generally used for treating spinal cord injuries your therapist appeals high speed, low magnitude thrust to the particular joint.
• Manual therapy can contribute to helping diabetes patients through the overall management plan endowed with exercises that will help a person in regulating blood sugar. A manual therapist will teach you how to care for your foot which will prevent similar problems in the future.

What Manual Therapy Can’t Do? 

• Mostly manual therapy is required for aged people as they have different complications and health issues. Some wonderful exercises can be very beneficial to the aged patient. However, their bodies are not capable to perform them.
• The therapist’s assignment to the patient may be unfavorable or unappealing to the patient. It will be extremely difficult for the therapist to work with the patient and provide good results if the patient is not serious about therapy and develops a negative attitude toward it.
• When you want to know about the results, they are different in every different case because different types of injury have a different level of therapy or it depends on how the patient is willing to cooperate.
• It can be difficult to know the tissue that is causing pain during a manual therapy session. Therapists have seen such cases that pain is much more complex than what is going on at the tissue level.
• Muscles, tendons, ligaments, and fascia are connective tissues that have a lot of data to show that even after months of aggressive stretching it is very difficult to change the length of muscles or contractures in adults.
• Sometimes patients have experienced reliable palpation for positional and movement faults.
• This is the 100-year-old method that is recognized as a vertebral subluxation model that has yet to be proven. Sometimes therapist practices such types of methods with the patient both of them have faced an issue like a stuck rib and rotated pelvis due to the SI joint being out.