News
Exercise found to decrease anxiety and other stress-related disorders
Physical therapists can help promote exercise in patients with anxiety
These findings support the use of exercise for patients with anxiety or stress disorder, and the researchers suggested that it should therefore be considered a viable opti…
Older adults with knee arthritis benefit from a home-exercise program
Home-exercise program leads to superior results, with most patients adhering to it
Results showed that participants in the home-exercise group experienced significant improvements in knee pain, stiffness and strength compared to the control g…
Low back pain patients who see PT first spend less
PT First is associated with benefits across the board
Based on the data collected, it was found that the incidence rate of LBP was 82.7 for every 1,000 patients. Of the patients who had LBP, about 80% had no physical therapy, while 8.7% saw …
Review shows exercise therapy one of the best shoulder treatments
Despite low quality of evidence, exercise is still recommended for patients with SIS
On the whole, results were supportive of both exercise therapy and manual therapy for SIS patients. For pain alone, studies showed that manual therapy was s…
Exercise found to reduce risk of experiencing episodes of neck pain
Exercise identified as an effective strategy for preventing neck pain
Two of the five RCTs investigated the use of exercise programs, and researchers deemed that there was moderate-quality evidence that exercise does substantially reduce the …
Spine strengthening exercises lead to improvements
Results showed that patients who followed the physical therapist-led exercise program experienced several significant improvements when compared to the control group. Most importantly, the angle of the curvature of the spine reduced by an average of 3…
Reducing elbow injury in young pitchers requires effective prevention
If an injury of any sort does occur, it's important to carefully discuss the details of it with the player, and to include their parents. Although many players and parents may have difficulty accepting that playing time needs to be stopped for a perio…
Two types of strength exercises lead to improvements for tennis elbow
After one year, results showed that patients in both groups improved in their scores for pain and muscle strength, but the eccentric exercise group experienced greater overall improvements. This was based on the fact that the eccentric group reported …
Elbow injuries of the ulnar collateral ligament don't require surgery
The ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) is a band of tissue that connects the inside of the upper arm bone to the inside of the forearm at the elbow. It helps to support and stabilize the arm during movements like throwing a ball, but is commonly injured …
Hands-on movement by PT have a positive effect on tennis elbow
Overall, results were supportive of the effectiveness of joint mobilizations for tennis elbow. In particular, high-quality evidence was found that showed two types of joint mobilization-mobilization with movement (MWM) and Mill's manipulation-were mor…
Balance training improves sports performance & may reduce injury risk
Overall, results were supportive of balance training in both applications. For the first focus of the review on athletic performance, the sports most commonly studied were soccer, basketball, and handball. The majority of these studies found signific…
Review finds that exercise is one of the best ways to prevent falls
A total of 54 RCTs with 39 different interventions focused on the risk of falls that caused injury, and the findings from these studies showed that some of the most effective interventions for reducing this risk included exercise, vision assessment, an…
Two exercises programs are effective in reducing falls in older men
Results showed that both aerobic and resistance exercises on their own were more effective than no exercise for reducing risk factors for falls such as balance, posture control, mobility and leg strength; however, combining these two types of exercise …
Bracing & balance training reduce the risk for ankle sprains
On the whole, results from the studies reviewed showed that balance training and bracing were both effective for reducing the risk and incidence of ankle sprains. Two of the three studies that evaluated bracing found that patients who wore these brace…
Exercise program is the most effective in reducing falls
Researchers found that the first step in reducing fall risk is to identify at-risk patients. This is accomplished by having patients check in with their healthcare provider yearly to report any falls or difficulties with gait and balance and to have a…
Knee arthritis patient outcomes affected by significant hip weakness
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a condition in which cartilage that normally protects a joint gradually wears down over the course of time, which leads to pain and other symptoms when the bones begin rubbing against one another. OA can develop in any joint, bu…
Patients treated with rehabilitation are less likely to use narcotics
Of the 52,504 NTKP patients examined, only 11% received any type of rehabilitation services for their condition at any time. Of the patients who were rehabilitated with physical therapy and other treatments, 52% began treatment within 15 days of their…
Improvements from PT for knee pain maintained by patients for 3 years
Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS)-sometimes referred to as runner's knee-is a painful condition that's particularly common in physically active individuals. Patients with PFPS typically experience a dull ache behind or around the kneecap that gets w…
Course of exercise yields similar results as surgery for knee injury
Overall, exercise therapy and surgery were found to lead to similar outcomes in knee pain, function, and performance for patients with meniscal lesions. Exercise therapy, however, was more effective for improving muscle strength than surgery after a s…
ACL surgery patients similar outcomes as ones treated non-operatively
Five years after treatment, patients in both groups experienced positive outcomes, and the results between the two groups were found to be very similar. In particular, scores from the quadriceps strength and single-legged hop test were high and did no…
