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

The Upper Neck

The upper neck or cervical spine is specialised in its anatomy and function as it has to bear the weight of the head and allow the head to be moved into any position for our sensory organs to receive the information they need. The two upper vertebrae, the atlas and the axis, have a specialised anatomical structure which is designed to satisfy the needs of head positioning in many functions. The upper vertebra, the atlas, has no body and is a bony ring with large facet joints to articulate with the facet joints of the lowest part of the skull, the occiput.

The second vertebra, the axis, has .captured. the body part of the vertebra above and has a upwardly protruding pin called the dens (latin for tooth) which forms a joint with part of the atlas above and also with a ligament which runs round it. The integrity of this joint is very important and if the dens is fractured or the ligament becomes slack then there can be a risk of damage to the spinal cord with death or quadriplegia. For this reason in any patient who may have suffered head or neck trauma the dens is x-rayed and checked carefully.

The Shoulder

The human shoulder is a design of great functional ability and ingenuity, designed entirely around placing our hands in the places we want them to be. The hand is the tool with which we connect with the world and we need to be able to place it in a great variety of positions so we can manipulate objects. The shoulder contributes to a very large extent to our ability to do this and to achieve this goal it has an extremely large range of motion permitting great flexibility. However, in satisfying the requirement for flexibility it sacrifices stability.

To allow the large range of motion the shoulder is designed with a relatively small socket and a very large ball, the head of the arm bone. The shoulder capsule, the fibrous ligamentous bag which surrounds and supports the joint, is relatively lax and contributes little to stability. The nervous and muscular systems have the job of keeping the large humeral head balanced on the small glenoid cavity (shoulder socket). The large shoulder muscles are more concerned with gross movements of the shoulder, and it is the rotator cuff muscles which perform much of the stabilising work of the joint.