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

Simple Neck and Shoulder Girdle Exercises

Slow performance of the exercises is important, taking up to five seconds to get to the end of each individual direction of movement. The neck should be moved in each of the standard directions which are: turning the head left and right; side flexing left and right (ear down to same shoulder with face facing forward); bending head forward and back; tucking the head in (a bit like a chicken). It is important to do each movement separately so the maximum range is obtained as the ends of the movement are where the value is in exercising.

Shoulder movements are useful as they may be stiff or the shoulder girdle may not be moving well, and shoulder movements stress the neck to some extent. Shrugging shoulders and rolling them backwards are an example of this movements as are circling of the arms either backwards or forwards. Once the movements are easy then some auto-resisted neck strengthening can be performed with the neck being held in place as one of the hands tries to push it out of position. Holding this for about ten seconds forces the muscles to work hard to maintain the neck position.

Physiotherapy Ultrasound

Ultrasound therapy is one of the large number of treatment techniques available to physiotherapists in treating the variety of conditions their patients present with. The frequencies used are in the range of 0.8 to 3.0 Megahertz, with a metal head used to generate the ultrasonic waves and ultrasound gel used between the skin and the head to facilitate transmission. A crystal in the head generates the waves by high frequency vibration and the waves pass through the gel and into the patient.s tissues to cause their effects. A local deep heating effect can be generated but this is typically not desirable so the machine head is kept moving and the settings may be set to pulsed mode so the beam of ultrasound is not continuous. This allows cooling and prevents heat build-up.

The effects of ultrasound can be many, including increasing the local blood flow, breaking down scar tissue or inhibiting its formation, a reduction in local swelling and inflammation. The physiotherapist will determine the size of the area to be treated and its tissue depth, choosing the size of machine head and the frequency and pulsed mode as appropriate. Higher doses and longer times are used for more chronic cases with the reverse for acute inflammatory conditions.