Physiotherapy Articles

In many cases in sport and exercise medicine, physical assessment is aimed at establishing a structural diagnosis to guide an effective treatment plan in the hope that someone will fully recover. The expert clinician appreciates pain as a protective output, maintains a level of vigilance for when it is necessary to take a broader approach, assesses the various contributors to the patient's pain and considers secondary factors that may act to modulate it at the peripheral and/or central levels.

This approach, which incorporates advances in pain science, will mean fewer patients are given inappropriate treatment that is missing an important element of their condition.

The aim of this paper is to review the pertinent clinical, diagnostic criteria, and multi-disciplinary management of FMD in the pediatric population. We highlight recent trends in pediatric FMD, including the increase in functional tic-like behaviors that has been observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taping is increasingly used to manage proprioceptive deficits, but existing reviews on its impact have shortcomings. 

In conclusion, the findings highlight the potential of taping to enhance joint repositioning accuracy compared to no tape or placebo taping. Further research needs to uncover underlying mechanisms and refine the application of taping for diverse populations with proprioceptive deficits.

Objective:  To validate the effectiveness of six exercise therapies in treating low back pain using Meta-analysis methods, and to propose optimal exercise duration, frequency, and cycle.

Conclusion:  All six exercise therapies effectively alleviated low back pain, with yoga showing the best results. The optimal exercise intervention protocol involved exercise duration not exceeding 30 min per session, frequency of more than 4 times per week, and cycle not exceeding 4 weeks. Additionally, exercise interventions exhibited the most significant improvements in Oswestry Disability Index scores for low back pain.

Running is a hugely popular activity but many runners overdo it, suffer injuries as a result, and then turn to us as clinicians to sort them out as quickly as possible.

This course will help you learn about the common risk factors for running overuse and how to prevent them.

Also described are the most common running-related injuries including patellofemoral pain and iliotibial band syndromes and their biomechanics and prevention.

Introduction: Research on musculoskeletal disorders indicates that pain sensitivity can be an important consideration for musculoskeletal clinicians in the holistic view of a patient presentation.

Purpose: The purpose of this masterclass is to provide a framework for the consideration of pain sensitivity as a contributing factor in the presentation of people with musculoskeletal pain.

Implications: A pragmatic blueprint for specific assessment related to pain sensitivity has been outlined. A framework for integrating assessment findings into clinical reasoning to formulate management plans for the pain sensitive patient is provided.

This online course will discuss clinical reasoning for dry needling in neurological conditions, clinical guidelines for dry needling in spasticity, mechanisms of dry needling on neurological conditions and will demonstrate relevant techniques.

Depression and inflammation fuel one another. Inflammation plays a key role in depression’s pathogenesis for a subset of depressed individuals; depression also primes larger cytokine responses to stressors and pathogens that do not appear to habituate. Accordingly, treatment decisions maybe informed by attention to questions of how (pathways) and for whom (predispositions) these links exist, which are the focus of this article. When combined with predisposing factors (moderators such as childhood adversity and obesity), stressors and pathogens can lead to exaggerated or prolonged inflammatory responses.

The aim of this systematic review was to examine RTP and the performance of soccer players after ACLR. 

Although a high percentage of athletes RTP after a relatively short period of absence from the sports field compared with other sports closely related to soccer, ACLR negatively impacts soccer players’ performance and career duration.

Vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT) is an exercise-based treatment program designed to promote vestibular adaptation and substitution. The goals of VRT are 1) to enhance gaze stability, 2) to enhance postural stability, 3) to improve vertigo, and 4) to improve activities of daily living.