Manual medicine - the missing link

Manual medicine is an activity that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of reversible functional disorders of the locomotor system by methods of mobilization, manipulation and massage. Functional disorders (inadequate joint mobility without significant pathological changes in the structure; impaired interrelationships of structures and functions of the locomotor system) are the most common cause of pain in the locomotor system, and pain is the most common symptom of functional impairment. Although written traces of manual therapy are more than 3000 years old before Christ, it attracts the attention of official medicine relatively late. It was not until 1965 in London. founded the International Federation of Manual Medicine (FIMM). In most European countries, there is an increasing tendency to integrate manual medicine into physical medicine and rehabilitation.

Manual therapy is performed after a subtle manual examination that allows the diagnosis of even the slightest disturbances of joint function in qualitative and quantitative terms as a prerequisite for targeted therapy, and only targeted therapy guarantees the best results.

Why manual therapy in patient syndromes of the spine and locomotor system?

Manual therapy has proven to be a very successful method of treatment in this area, much more effective than conventional physical therapy, which is often applied in a stereotyped way - without an individual approach. The best results are achieved in resolving the most common syndromes and conditions: lumbago, lumbosciatica, joint pain, pain and paresthesia (tingling) down the arms and legs, internal pain caused by dislocation of the spine, scoliosis, poor posture, headache, dizziness, spondylolisthesis and others.

With manual therapy, we act on the cause of the problem, unlike allopathic (classical) medicine, which acts only symptomatically, so that at the beginning of the problem the symptoms usually calm down, but later they usually reappear in an even stronger form. Problems eventually turn into chronic ailments (which are much more difficult or can no longer be solved at all) due to not solving the primary cause.

As a precaution, we can use manual techniques to work very well on the body structure in order to prevent, slow down or alleviate possible or probable ailments, even before there are painful symptoms. Unfortunately, such a system of preventive diagnostics and therapy in classical medicine does not exist - patients therefore never go to the doctor to prevent, for example, low back pain (such a request would probably cause ridicule and astonishment of doctors, although from the point of view of manual medicine it is completely justified and logical ), but when they have certain difficulties.

Physical therapy Zagreb

Manual diagnostics and therapy belong to the most natural form of treatment of functional disorders of the locomotor system, without pharmacology, expensive equipment and various radiations.

The use of only drug and physical therapy in patients whose clinical picture is primarily blocked (reversible functional disorders) usually gives poor results, while manual therapy quickly and elegantly solves such problems, patients are trained faster.

Physicians are often faced with the failure of drug and physical therapy in patients with painful spinal syndromes, and one of the problems is of a diagnostic nature. Often the cause of pain remains unknown even after exhaustive clinical, neurological, laboratory and radiological treatment, so the doctor must be satisfied with the syndrome diagnosis (cervical, thoracic, lumbosacral syndrome).

Allopathic medicine in its inability to solve radicular syndromes (disc herniation, protrusion) often approaches surgical procedures, with very questionable results. Most of these problems can be successfully solved by manual therapy (non-aggressive) and traction with an extensomat, without endangering the health and life of the patient.