Physiotherapy is one of the most effective auxiliaries and basic methods of treating various diseases. Drug therapy often has a side effect on the body due to which the recovery is delayed. Physiotherapy is designed to increase the effectiveness of treatment without medications, accelerate the regeneration of tissues after surgery, relieve exacerbations of chronic diseases, and treat acute processes of various diseases.
Usually, physiotherapy involves the action of only physical factors, but in combination with some methods (hydrotherapy, inhalation), electrotherapy is also used. Some physical influence promotes the penetration of drugs into deeply located organs and tissues.
The spectrum of the fields of application of physiotherapy is wide – the treatment finds application practically in every section of medicine. The therapeutic effect of most physiotherapy procedures is to remove inflammation, swelling, decompression of nerve endings, since physical effects most often have a beneficial effect on cellular nutrition, stimulating blood supply to tissues and organs, and lymph drainage. Thus, speeding up the recovery.
In the treatment and rehabilitation of patients with a variety of diseases, medical physical factors, such as natural (climate, air, sun, water), and preformed or obtained artificially, take a big place. Being the most adequate for the body irritants of the environment, therapeutic physical factors have a homeostatic effect on various organs and systems, contribute to increasing the body’s resistance to adverse effects, enhance its protective-adaptive mechanisms, have a pronounced (sanatogenic effect, increase the effectiveness of other therapeutic agents and weaken secondary effects of drugs, their use is available, highly effective and cost-effective.
Modern physiotherapy has a huge number of different in physical nature, physiological, therapeutic effect and methods of application of methods. Their use is constantly expanding, and today it is difficult to name a disease in which physiotherapeutic methods could not be used with benefit for patients. If in the beginning medical physical factors were used only for the purpose of curing patients with chronic diseases, now their area of application is much wider. The main areas of physical medicine are curative (actually physiotherapy), rehabilitation, preventive, diagnostic.
With therapeutic purposes, physical factors are used primarily in subacute and chronic disease, and to a lesser extent in acute stages of diseases of the therapeutic and surgical profile. In recent years, thanks to the development and improvement of internal physiotherapy techniques, as well as resonance and controlled variants of exposure, physiotherapy is increasingly used in urgent situations, as well as in patients with oncology. The purpose, choice, and dosage of physical factors must necessarily be carried out taking into account the age and anatomical and physiological characteristics of the patient’s body.
It is difficult to find a disease in which the use of physical factors could not be useful for patients. However, with some conditions of the body and diseases from physiotherapy, you should still abstain. Common contraindications for physiotherapy are malignant neoplasms, systemic blood diseases, severe cachexia, cardiovascular system diseases in the stage of decompensation, grade III arterial hypertension, bleeding or suspicion of it, severe psychosis, epilepsy with frequent seizures, febrile state, individual intolerance to the physical factor.
The basis of physiological therapy is the external impact of natural factors on the human body. Like any section of medicine, physiotherapy has different directions. The most popular and well-proven methods are:
- electrotherapy
- laser therapy;
- phototherapy (light treatment);
- via dynamic therapy (pulse therapy with electric current);
- myostimulation (electrostimulation of nerve endings);
- cryotherapy.
Laser therapy has a wide range of applications. Due to the fact that laser light has a positive effect on the regeneration processes in the body, it was used with physiotherapeutic purposes in the postoperative period, as well as in the inflammatory processes of any localization. In addition, the laser stimulates the hematopoietic functions of the body, increases immunity, improves metabolism. Due to its medicinal properties, laser treatment has found its use in otolaryngology, neurology, pediatrics. Our clinic in Mississauga is equipped with a modern laser therapy device that helps our patients get rid of or .
Phototherapy is effective in the treatment of skin diseases, nervous disorders. Light therapy and vacuum pulse therapy became the newest achievement in this direction of physiotherapy. Due to external exposure to vacuum and light on the tissue, the blood becomes more mobile and less viscous. This method of physiotherapy makes it possible to improve the work of organs, increase the working capacity of the body. Especially often light-vacuum therapy is used in urology and gynecology.
The use of physiotherapeutic procedures in the complex is one of the newest directions in the treatment and prevention of diseases. It has proven itself in the whole world. The combination of the laser with magnetotherapy and myostimulation is widely used in the treatment of infertility, disorders of the nervous system,
Rehabilitation direction of use of medical physical factors is closely connected with the previous one. At all stages of rehabilitation (rehabilitation therapy, rehabilitation, and proper rehabilitation), electrotherapy, massage, exercise therapy, mechanotherapy, balneotherapy, etc. are actively used. In patients with the neurological and orthopedic profile, physiotherapy is generally considered the main means of medical rehabilitation. A significant place in rehabilitation is occupied by resorts with their wide arsenal of natural and preformed factors.
Physioprophylaxis is the improvement and prevention of human diseases through the use of natural and artificially created physical factors. The most active and affordable means of prevention are air, water, ultraviolet rays, electromagnetic fields, etc.
Physiognomy is the use of physical factors with a diagnostic purpose. Many psychodiagnostic methods (X-ray diagnostics, ultrasound diagnostics, thermometry, etc.) have been widely developed, have become independent and are now considered in other sections of medicine. Some still belong to physiotherapy and are used primarily by physiotherapists. The most common are electrodiagnostics and its variety of electrodontodiagnostics, diagnostic photoerithema, the study of electrical activity of the skin (the so-called skin-galvanic reaction – RGR), methods of electropuncture diagnostics,
Particular interest in physical factors is due not only to their wide therapeutic and prophylactic, rehabilitation and diagnostic capabilities but also to the advantages and features that they possess in comparison with other therapeutic agents, including drug therapy.
One of the advantages of physical methods of treatment is the universality of their action so that the same factor can be used for a variety of diseases. No less important advantage of physiotherapy is its physiological character. Physical factors, being elements of the external environment, are the usual stimuli for the organism, to which unconditioned reflexes are developed in the course of individual development. Thanks to physiological, the realization of the action of physical factors is carried out through the same mechanisms that have developed in the interaction of the organism with the external environment in the process of evolution.
It is impossible not to note the normalizing (homeostatic) nature of the action of physiotherapy, as well as the ability to exert a training effect, to stimulate compensatory-adaptive processes in the body.
Physical factors in therapeutic dosages, as a rule, do not have toxicity, do not cause side affects and allergization. An organism. This is one of the most important advantages of physiotherapy before pharmacotherapy. However, one should not oppose the physical methods of treatment of medicinal and other types of therapy. They should organically enter the treatment-and-prophylactic or rehabilitation complex as an integral part of it. In addition, it is known that physical factors can potentiate the effect of drugs, weaken the side effects of some of them, promote their biotransformation.
The advantage of physiotherapy is its long aftereffect. The essence of it is that shifts in the body, the therapeutic effect is not only a considerable time preserved, but often even increase after the end of the course of treatment. Therefore, long-term results after physiotherapy are often better than immediate ones. The aftereffect period can range from several weeks (for drug electrophoresis, etc.) to 4-6 months. (mud therapy, balneotherapy, etc.).
An important distinctive feature of physical therapy is its good compatibility with other therapeutic agents. In addition, physiotherapy methods are widely and with high efficiency combined (combined) with each other. The possibility of using physical factors in the form of general or local procedures, in continuous or pulsed mode, in the form of external and internal influences, allows to reduce the adaptation of the organism to the treatment being carried out, contributes to its individualization.
Finally, the use of physical methods of treatment is available and relatively cheap, and this makes physiotherapy a mass treatment.