Physiotherapists in Hove treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Pain Management

Pain is a common and unwelcome symptom of many injuries and conditions, although there are some serious conditions and diseases which do not cause pain. Acute pain is typically secondary to injury and tissue damage, short term, easily treatable and very likely to settle with time back to normal. Chronic pain is long term, not well related to tissue abnormalities, not easily treated and does not settle down with time. It is for these more difficult types of pain that the discipline of pain management has become an important part of medical care.

Many types of pain are not directly treatable in terms of the underlying cause being treatable, or in many cases even understood. Pain management consultants concentrate on treating the pain itself as a pathological entity rather than any assumed underlying abnormality. They have a selection of specialised medications and can perform procedures such as nerve blocks and epidurals as well as referring to their therapy teams which typically include physiotherapists and clinical psychologists. Assessment of these patients is complex as physical, social, familial, work and psychological factors may all be important in explaining the levels of pain and disability suffered by the patient.

Repeated Loading of Lumbar Discs

Lower loads than the sudden compression loading which occurs seldom can cause a disc prolapse if the loading in a bent position is repeated in a cyclical manner. This can be caused in discs which are reasonably young and causes a large split in the rear of the disc wall to one side or another, allowing the central nuclear material to ooze out. In several examples the layers of the disc wall which were the most outer ones did not split and form a fissure and the nuclear material protruding through the fissure inside built up behind the remaining layers in a bulge. As the ligament overlying this has many nerve endings, such a bulge could cause pain.

Older discs were shown in some cases to have fissures which are already present before any experimental loading and these discs did not prolapse during the loading tests, perhaps because the fissures had healed or because discs in poorer condition are too stiff and fibrosed to prolapse. If twisting, side bending or compression is added to bending then prolapse can occur more easily with less bend of the back. In some cases the nucleus may protrude out but in others the outer disc walls can protrude themselves.