On April 19, 2011, Haider Ali and Usmara Zafar, our two fundees, gave a presentation at the School of Physiotherapy at Mayo Hospital, Lahore. It is part of King Edward Medical College and is the oldest and biggest hospital in Pakistan.
Their presentation was about muscle energy, which is one type of technique developed by an American osteopath, Fred Mitchell Senior, D.O. in the late 1940ies.
The objective of Muscle Energy Treatment, which is typically used in combination with other osteopathic techniques, is to restore mobility in the articulations, restore the mobility in the tissues and restore the autonomic nervous system. These restorations will then help regulate local and global blood circulation, trophicity of the skin, discharge frequency of proprioceptors and sensitivity in the synapses.
It was the opportunity to present to the physiotherapy students the precision of osteopathic diagnosis, where we differenciate vertebral group lesions or segmental lesions, that require totally different methodologies.
At the end of their presentation, Haider and Usmara were asked a lot of questions, regarding practical applications, differences between osteopathy and reiky, manual therapy or chiropractics. The school principal asked them to come back in the near future and present myofascial release, another widely used osteopathic technique.
We hope this event will be the first of many, and will allow more and more doctors and physiotherapists to realize how osteopathy can be a most useful tool to help restore health in their patients. Osteopathy can be used alone, or in combination with allopathic care, depending on conditions. It can greatly alleviate the burden of over-worked doctors by making patients better faster, and with long-term improvement in their own ability to maintain homeostasis. It allows physiotherapists to be significantly more effective with their orthopedic patients, and open the range of diagnosis they can work with.
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