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

Falls and Healthy Bones

Falling in adults is an important matter with involvement of around 30% of people over sixty-five years old and half of those over eighty-five years. There are significant risks to falling for elderly people, with many much older people dying and or suffering loss of mobility or other problems. Ninety percent of hip fractures are caused by falling and this comes with a very high cost both personally and financially. Only twenty percent of people who fracture their hip recover well enough to attain their previous level of functional abilities which includes walking. There may be many reasons for a person falling and the evidence for the many interventions proposed being effective is not very good.

Physiotherapists prescribe exercise programmes as part of their main arsenal of skills, with good evidence that well designed programmes which include training balance and strength can be effective at reducing falls in the community. Patient access to assessment and treatment by a physiotherapist is however variable in the UK, with hip fracture patients likely to receive this (due to admission to hospital) but patients with non-hip fractures are much less likely to receive this even when admitted. Physios have a much greater role in this matter which they have not taken up.

Physiotherapy Shoulder Exercises after Breast Cancer Operation

Breast cancer is the commonest cancer in women and in England there are over 36,000 people diagnosed yearly. Treatment is complex but surgery is common to remove the tumour and to remove four or more lymph nodes in the axilla or armpit. This is to work out what stage the cancer is at and prevent it recurring in the axilla. A side effect of this treatment is the development of swelling in the affected arm, known as lymphoedema, which can remain over time and cause physical and psychological problems. Physiotherapists routinely assess and treat patients with cancer, pre or post operatively, to manage the mobility and joint problems which develop after diagnosis and treatment.

Removal of the axillary nodes impacts upon movement of the shoulder as the tissues in the axilla are stretched by raising the arm above the head. A paper in Physiotherapy (December 2008) by Todd and co-workers compared two groups of post operative patients, with one group having unrestricted shoulder movement after 48 hours and the other with this delayed for seven days. The results showed that delaying the movement for seven days avoided the incidence of increased arm lymphoedema, an important consideration as the level of swelling can remain long term.