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There is no single cause for why two people experiencing same injury, receiving same interventions can go on to have very different pain experiences with the acute pain in one reducing within few days while the other goes on to experience chronic, recurrent pain. This has been attributed to physical, psychological, social, environmental or behavioural characteristics. Thus understanding pain management has remained a challenge for even the most gifted clinicians. There have been thousands of books written to explain various aspects of pain. In this article, I have highlighted the top 10 books pertaining to understanding and managing pain.
1. Explain Pain
Explain Pain aims to give clinicians and people in pain the power to challenge pain and to consider new models for viewing what happens during pain. Once they have learnt about the processes involved they can follow a scientific route to recovery. This is one of the must read books for anyone working with pain patients. This book is an excellent resource for understanding how pain works in our brains and nervous systems. The text is delivered in a non technical way for ease of understanding and is very informative. This book is frequently recommended by the physiotherapists to their patients suffering from chronic pain and an excellent recommendation, I must say. If you are a physiotherapist and have not read Explain Pain, do it today.
2. Managing Pain Before It Manages You, Fourth Edition
3. Pain Medicine and Management: Just the Facts
4. Essentials of Pain Management
5. The Mindfulness Solution to Pain: Step-by-Step Techniques for Chronic Pain Managment
This book helps to understand how emotions and thoughts affect physical symptoms, reverse the debilitating effects of some chronic pain conditions, Prevent pain from becoming chronic or long-term, Lift the anxiety and depression that may accompany chronic pain.
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Rehabilitation adherence is an outcome of a complex interaction of physical, social, therapeutic and psychological elements. This second article, based on the findings of my doctoral research, highlights the role of social support and other social influences as a determinant of rehabilitation adherence.
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Every year the National Autistic Society (NAS) encourages the general public to take part in activities during the seven days of World Autism Awareness Week in order to raise money and awareness with campaigns like Too Much Information. Autism Awareness Day is marked on April 2 every year, World Autism Awareness Week will be from March 26 to April 2 in 2018.
In order to celebrate the Autism Awareness Week and to encourage awareness, we present 20 facts about autism.
1. Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are neurodevelopmental conditions characterized by impairment in reciprocal social interactions and communication skills, and the presence of restricted, stereotypical behaviors.
2. In 2010 there were an estimated 52 million cases of ASDs around the world, equating to a population prevalence of 7.6 per 1000 or one in 132 persons
3. The rate of autism has steadily grown over the last twenty years. In 1980 the reported rates were about 1 in 10,000 people
4. Autism Spectrum Disorders are almost 5 times more common among boys (1 in 42) than among girls (1 in 189).
5. ASD has been reported in all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.
6. Aggregated national costs of supporting children with ASDs are £3.1 billion (US $4.5 billion) per year in the United Kingdom (excluding Social Security and benefit payments, which are transfer payments and not real societal costs) and $61 billion per year in the United States.
7. About 40% of children with autism do not speak. About 25%–30% of children with autism have some words at 12 to 18 months of age and then lose them. Others might speak, but not until later in childhood
8. Common symptoms of autism are delayed or absent speech, problems listening, concentrating and understanding, frequent repetition of words and phrases, taking things literally, difficulty sensing and interpreting people’s feelings, difficulty expressing feelings, over or under sensitivity to sound, touch, taste, smell or light, rituals or repetitive behaviours, disliking changes to routine, difficulty making friends and socialising.
9. Some of the co-existing conditions along with Autism Spectrum Disorder are ADHD, allergies, asthma, epilepsy, digestive disorders, persistent viral infections, feeding disorders, sensory integration dysfunction, sleeping disorders, and more
10. One of the biggest myths about autism is that it is a childhood condition but in reality, it is a lifelong condition. In fact in the UK there are more autistic adults than children.
11. Research suggests that around 28% of autistic people have special talents but the cause is unknown and certainly not all autistic children are gifted.
12. There is no cure for Autism; however, there are a number of behavioral therapies that can drastically improve how a person with Autism Spectrum Disorder acts. Behavioral therapies can include speech, occupational therapy, or applied behavioral analysis.
13. Autism Spectrum Disorder is much more likely to happen in children born to “older” parents, meaning mothers over 35 or fathers over 40.
14. Children with autism also often have sensory processing problems—unusual sensitivity to sounds, lights, textures or smells. They may be overwhelmed by too much sensory input, or be disturbed and uncomfortable because of a lack of sensory input, which they may try to get by bumping into things, and excessively touching and smelling things.
15. Autism cannot be cured at the present time, but a structured educational program and tailored therapy have been shown to help children develop skills they are lacking and minimize behaviors that are problematic.
16. Applied behavior analysis is a psychotherapeutic regimen that actively teaches and encourages desired social and communication behaviors that other children learn intuitively.
17. An approach called developmentally based intervention uses subjects, words, and stimuli to model a typical developmental progression for an a child who doesn’t develop them independently. As every child is different, other appropriate therapies may include occupational, physical, and speech-language.
18. Dogs have been shown to improve autistic children’s quality of life, independence, and safety. The presence of a trained dog can reduce aggressive behavior, calm the child, and serve as a link to the child’s community.
19. Almost half of children with ASD have average or above average IQ but still only 16% of adults with autism go on to gain employment
20. Children with ASD can learn and succeed in the classroom and beyond. Like every child, with the help of their families, providers, doctors, specialists, and communities, kids with ASD can not only survive but thrive in the society.
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The Mulligan Concept is one of the commonly used manual therapy techniques in management of musculoskeletal conditions. Pioneered by Brian Mulligan in the 1970's, it is based on Kaltenborn's concept of restoring the accessory component of physiological joint movement. Its been over 12 years since I underwent training in Mulligan Concept. In this article, I first review the basic principles of the concept and then later look at some of the literature around the effectiveness of Mulligan Concept.
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Reading and continued development is a key element of any professional's practice. The day we stop learning, that is the day we stop growing. And what happens if we don't grow? We stagnate. So today I am sharing with you a list of books which form the essential reading list for musculosksletal physiotherapists.
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Poor rehabilitation adherence may lead to sub-optimal treatment outcomes, reduced clinic efficiency and increased cost of care. But despite this knowledge, research indicates that attendance at physiotherapy departments is within 54%-94% and can be as low as 40%. Several studies confirm that adherence to a clinic-based exercise protocol is often around the 50% mark and may be particularly poor for unsupervised home exercise programs.
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While objective clinical testing is important and is given a lot of focus within clincal training programs, subjective assessment and history taking is one of the key aspects of the clinical reasoning process. A detailed subjective assessment will help a physiotherapist form provisional hypotheses as to the potential causes of the patient's presentation and therefore form the basis of the subsequent objective assessment.
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Low back pain is a major health problem around the world which accounts for considerable socioeconomic and healthcare burden. The life time incidence of LBP has been reported between 60-80% (Twomey 2000; O’Sullivan 2005) and out of these incidents in about 80-90% cases pain subsides within first 2-3 months and rest of the patients (around 10-20%) develop chronic pain syndromes (Carey et al 2000). Chronic low back pain (CLBP) patients comprises 73-77% of all the patients with lower back pain disorders. In about 85% of these patients the exact cause and diagnosis is still elusive (Main and Watson 1999) and classified as non specific chronic lower back pain (NSCLBP) (Waddell 2004).
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Every runner considers injuries to be their nemesis. These can vary from minor niggles to fractures and can side line runners from their practice, performance and passion for days, weeks or sometimes even months leading to them requiring rehabilitation and graded return to running.
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Introduction: Shoulder pain along with subsequent restriction of movement is a common clinical presentation in both the sporting and general populations.Compromised shoulder movement due to pain, stiffness or weakness can cause substantial disability and affect a person’s ability to carry out daily activities and work.One year prevalence of shoulder pain has been reported between 5% and 47% . Conditions that can contribute to the clinical picture of a painful stiff shoulder (PSS) include calcific tendinitis (acute & chronic), non calcific tendinitis of the rotator cuff (acute & chronic), bicipital tenosynovitis, arthrosis of the glenohumeral or the acromioclavicular joint, tear of the rotator cuff, sprain of rotator cuff & synovitis .
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Within musculoskeletal physiotherapy, adherence to exercise programs is a challenge and generally adherence has been reported to be in the range of 50% and can be even lower for unsupervised home exercise programs. If you don't take your medicine, its likely not to have its desired effect. Similarly, if you do not adhere to the prescribed exercise program, it is likely that effect of exercise program will be sub-optimal.
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Introduction – Musculoskeletal physiotherapy is a specialist area of professional physiotherapy practice concerned with the assessment, diagnosis and management of the musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. The main aims of musculoskeletal physiotherapy are to reduce pain, maintain/regain joint movement, and maximize function and health-related quality of life without adverse effects, enabling people to cope better with ill health.
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As pain alleviation is one of the principal therapeutic outcomes for musculoskeletal physiotherapists, it is imperative that we are able to accurately evaluate and measure pain.
