Manual therapy

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Manual Therapy encompasses the diagnosis and treatment of the ailments of various etiologies through hands-on intervention. Manual Therapy is practiced by people within various health care professions, including Physiotherapists/Physical Therapists, Massage Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Chiropractors, Osteopaths, Physiatrists and more.

 Manual Assessment uses a variety of hands-on tests in an effort to determine which structure may be responsible for the pain being assessed. Unfortunately, there are no reliability studies demonstrating the ability of such tests to accurately determine the structure responsible for the pain. In fact, the scientific literature has shown that palpation as a manual assessment tool is unreliable and that the underlying cause of 85% of low back pain cannot be determined by any means. Several manual tests that provoke or relieve pain have been shown to be reliable.
 Treatment includes all the means of hands-on work and could include, but is not limited to, soft tissue mobilization, various connective tissue techniques, myofascial release, craniosacral mobilizations (developed by cranial osteopaths, including Harold I Magoun), mobilizations of the joints and spinal segments, mobilization of neural tissue, visceral mobilization, strain and counterstrain (developed by Lawrence Jones, DO), and Integrative Manual Therapy (developed by an American PhD Physical Therapist, Sharon W. Giammatteo). Advocates of the therapy claim that these techniques, when correctly applied, often result in dramatic improvement of the patient's signs and symptoms. On the other hand, properly designed prospective studies are equivocal as to the therapeutic benefits of manual therapy.