Physiotherapy Treatment Methods

Following a comprehensive physiotherapy assessment your physiotherapist will discuss with you what treatments would be most effective for your condition. Treatments may include:

 

Soft Tissue Techniques

Soft tissue are structures which are non bony. For example muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves and the fascia (tissue that covers and connects muscles).

An injury may damage any of these structures when they are overstretched or torn.
Scar tissue is then formed to repair the damage. This is strong and effective at mending but much less mobile and flexible as the original structure. Without treatment to improve the quality and mobility of scar tissue and release the tight structures then movement may be affected and reoccurrence of the injury is more likely.

Overuse of a tissue  due to poor prolonged postures or repeated unaccustomed movement for example a  bad posture at work or in the car can lead to changes and damage to tissues over a longer period of time. These types of problem also benefit from soft tissue techniques

Following any type of operation there will be extensive scar formation in all the structures that were involved and addressing those will improve the outcome of the operation

Physiotherapy targets the  tissues with specialist techniques that help improve scar tissue, stretch muscles and reduce the ‘knots’ or stretch the connecting fascia.

Physiotherapy soft tissue techniques include: myofascial release, trigger point techniques, massage.

 

Joint Mobilisation and Manipulation

Joints may become stiff and painful after injury, an operation, through degeneration or wear and tear. Once a movement in a joint is reduced a vicious circle of pain and stiffness develops: you move it less as it hurts, but this causes more stiffness and reduced joint movement, so you move it even less………..

Physiotherapy joint mobilisation techniques are used to help reduce joint pain and stiffness and therefore improve and restore joint movement. They can be used on your spine (neck and back) and also on joints that are part of your arms and legs, such as knee, hip, shoulder and elbow.

 

Exercises, including Pilates

Exercises are very important to help improve muscle strength and flexibility (length), and improve movement. Physiotherapy will teach and advise you on specific exercises for your condition that you can do at home or at a gym, what ever is more suitable for you.

Following an injury, operation or actually any condition that causes you pain muscles will become weaker. This is because pain stops muscles working as well and damage to a muscle will also make muscles weaker. Therefore it is important you do specific exercise to strengthen your muscles back up again. This is important as joint need strong muscles around them to enable them to move well.

Pilates is a specific type of exercise which can help conditions such as poor posture and back pain. Pilates helps you to strengthen and have good control of your postural muscles which tend to be muscles that lie deep within your body providing support to our spine. Pilates is also known as core stability exercises.

 

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is the insertion of very fine, single use sterile needles into areas of pain and muscle tightness. It is used as an adjunct to other physiotherapy techniques

 

Electrotherapy

This involves using machines such as ultrasound, interferential and TENs. The type of machine chosen will depend on your condition. For example ultrasound can be used to aid injured ligaments to heal and TENs can help to control back pain.

 

Education and advice

We believe it is important to understand your condition and what physiotherapy can do to help you and what you can do to help yourself. This may include advising on how best to set you desk and chair up (ergonomics) at work, or how to pace or modify activities for example if you have a degenerative knee problem like osteoarthritis (OA), or advice regarding footwear and orthotics (insoles for your shoes). Physiotherapy can also provide education regarding prevention and how to best manage conditions that are not fully curable. For example if you have recurrent long standing back pain education would include what exercises to do or not, what home self treatments may help with you pain and what to do when you back pain flares up (gets worse).

 

Our Prices