HEMME APPROACH TO SOFT-TISSUE THERAPY

esponsive to other forms of treatments. Even those who cannot be cured can
at least find enough relief to improve the quality of their lives.
Rather than abandon these patients to ineffective or dangerous methods of
treatment because definitive research that validates soft-tissue therapy is not
available, practitioners should continue treating patients to the best of their
ability. Techniques that are beneficial, and do the patient no harm, should not
be denied. By the same token, practitioners should support scientific research
and look for ways to prove or disprove the effectiveness of each technique.
Even though some of these studies may have a negative impact on profitability
by discrediting a popular but useless technique, the positive impact on patient
care should outweigh the loss of income.
Despite the amazing and sometimes even miraculous results, soft-tissue
therapy is not without limitations. First, soft-tissue therapy is not a panacea.
The three main goals of soft-tissue therapy are less pain, a normal pain-free
range of motion, and good quality movement. Second, if soft-tissue
impairments are symptoms of a serious pathologic condition, treatments are at
best palliative and symptoms are likely to recur. In some cases, surgery and
medication are the only possible answers.
Yet unlike surgery or medication, soft-tissue therapy is a conservative,
non-invasive form of treatment with very few side effects. For qualified and
conscientious practitioners, the possibilities for helping a patient are great and
the chances of harming a patient are small.
Another factor that limits research is the profitability of the activity itself.
More money is normally spent validating activities that are highly profitable
than validating activities that are less profitable. Drug companies, for instance,
spend tremendous amounts of money validating a cure for common diseases
because of the high profit margin but seldom spend the same amount of money
validating a cure for rare diseases.
As a therapeutic activity, low-velocity manipulations are normally less
profitable than high-velocity manipulations. Where the average low-velocity
treatment takes about 15 to 55 minutes, the average high-velocity treatment
takes about 5 to 10 minutes. This would partially explain why in a field like
chiropractic that uses both high-velocity and low-velocity manipulations, the
majority of research focuses on high-velocity manipulations.
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HEMME Approach to Soft-Tissue Therapy