Manual Therapy in COVID-19
Hey there!
The bigger question that can come in the minds of a manual therapist is that how can manual therapy be beneficial during covid-19.
What can we as manual therapists can do?
The main focus that we have is breathing exercises and strategies on how to increase the SpO2 of a person, indeed that is the major concern, but in order for the lungs to expand we need a good mobility of the thoracic spine, intercostals, costo-vertebral and costo-chondral joints, that can be achieved with great ease with manual therapy!
Why do we need to do it?
Now these are the things that can’t be ignored since in order to increase the SpO2 you need the lungs to expand and sometimes due to lack of mobility there is no proper pump handle or bucket handle movement that may take place and hence wouldn’t allow the maximum lung function and vital capacity to be achieved by the patient. This isn’t a new fact rather a well-established one, it has been seen that the vital capacity is reduced in scoliotic patients and other patients with reduced thoracic mobility.
How to do it?
The major question arrives at is how to do it? These techniques are easy to administer and can be done by a physiotherapist.
The thoracic cage as the following joints: thoracic intervertebral joints, costochondral joints, costovertebral joints and the intercostal joints

Thoracic Spine

Costochondral and Costovertebral Joints

Intercostal Joints
So this was the basic mobilisation techniques that can be performed during this day and age and can be done in order to help the patients and remember a strong lung and a good vital capacity is very important in order to fight the virus.
Keep your patients motivated and happy, they need to have faith that they will be fine and once they have the motivation there is no one that can stop them from recovering.
Cheers
Dr Deepak Kumar Capri
MSPT, FIAP, PhD
Capri Institute – Capri4Physio

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