Physiotherapy is not just meant for pain management

Physiotherapy, as a health care profession, embraces various treatment modalities such as exercises, heat therapy, electrotherapy, and patient education for treating an ailment, injury, or deformity. Physiotherapy is a treatment pattern that aims at restoring and maintaining a patient's ability, function, and overall well-being.

Physiotherapists focus on both prevention and recovery. As a result, Physiotherapy has evolved in the form of diverse sub-specialities, which enables physiotherapy to deal with various conditions and peculiarities more effectively and appropriately. Below are some of those physiotherapy sub-specialities and their features or uniqueness:

Orthopedic/musculoskeletal physiotherapy

This sub-speciality deals with treating the deformities and ailments related to the human musculoskeletal system. This speciality in physiotherapy includes working with the ligaments, muscles, joints, bones, and tendons.

Musculoskeletal treatments help to gain muscle strength, reduce pain, increase mobilisation, and correct skeletal alignment. So if someone has had an injury in recent times that has left them unable to use some muscles, or you need to gain muscle strength after surgery, orthopedic physiotherapy will be the best option for recovery.

Geriatric physiotherapy

This sub-speciality deals with certain age-related medical conditions. As people grow-older, many conditions affect them, such as cancer, osteoporosis (fragile and brittle bones), arthritis (pain in the joints), joint replacements, Alzheimer's disease, and balance disorders. Geriatric physiotherapy treatment aims to help:

• Reduce pain.

• Restore mobility affected by old age.

• Workaround physical limitations.

• Improve physical fitness and overall health.

Geriatric physiotherapists guide the aged or elderly about the restriction to specific movements, which can aggravate pain and provide their patients with gait aids to minimise pain and improve overall mobility by employing specific techniques and exercises.

Women's health

This sub-speciality in physiotherapy is rare worldwide, the afore explained. Also called physiotherapy for women, this subspecialty addresses main issues related to prenatal care, childbirth, post-natal care, the female reproductive system, and problems with infertility.

Sports physiotherapists

Sports and exercise physiotherapists work in a wide variety of settings. For example, they often work in the elite athlete setting in competitive and professional sports, working and travelling with elite individual athletes or teams, and integrating their services with other medical professionals, coaches, strength and conditioning personnel and other support staff. Sports and exercise physiotherapists are also actively involved within various sporting organisations to coordinate physiotherapy services, injury prevention, rehabilitation and injury surveillance programs.

Rehabilitation

Sports and exercise physiotherapists utilise clinical reasoning and therapeutic skills to assess and diagnose sports-related injuries. Furthermore, they are skilled in designing, implementing, evaluating and modifying evidence-based interventions that allow for a safe return to the athlete's optimal level of performance in their specific sport or physical activity.

Performance enhancement

Sports and exercise physiotherapists contribute to enhancing the athlete's performance by evaluating the athlete's physical and performance-related profile. They can advise or intervene to optimise performance in a specific sport within a multidisciplinary team approach.

(The doctor is a (PT) MPT, Director, Chief Physiotherapist - Ucchvas Transitional Care Ucchvas Rehabilitation, Banjarahills, Hyderabad Ph: 09666671107

040-67107107)