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

Degeneration of Intervertebral Discs

The terms degeneration and ageing when applied to intervertebral discs are not exactly the same thing, as degeneration implies damaging changes in disc structure while ageing changes may be incidental. However, degeneration is a lot more common in older rather than younger discs. Degeneration does involve things which ageing does not, such as larger structural changes in the annulus in the endplates. This structural change starts to occur in a person.s twenties and reaches its maximum in middle age. Because disc degeneration occurs more commonly in men and in the lower lumbar spine it is assumed to be related to mechanical stresses.

Changes which occur in the discs are tears in the annular fibres of various patterns, buckling of the inner annular fibres inwards towards the disc centre, greater bulging of the outer disc walls, loss of disc height, defects in the endplates which can include these bulging up into the vertebral body. Blood vessels and nerves can grow inwards along the annular tears as they are no longer opposed by the internal disc pressure. Degeneration may disrupt the disc.s ability to distribute the compression stresses evenly, leading to high levels of stress being applied to areas which are not designed to cope with this.

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.