Neurological physiotherapy is a branch of physiotherapy dedicated to the treatment of alterations and injuries caused by an affectation of the central or peripheral nervous system that affect movement.
Neurological physiotherapy focuses its activity on improving the patient's mobility. To do so, it creates new neurological pathways and reinforces the existing ones so that movement can take place. Thus, it will treat the different motor disorders affected by a lesion at the level of the Central Nervous System (CNS). These can be caused by trauma, a certain disease or as a consequence of a cerebrovascular accident (CVA).
Within neurological rehabilitation, neurological physiotherapy requires communication between all the professionals involved. It is necessary to know and identify the characteristics and needs of each patient in order to make the right decisions and adapt the physiotherapy techniques in an individualized manner. For this reason, knowledge of the different pathologies presented by each patient is fundamental for the professional physiotherapist.
Neurological physiotherapy can be applied to both children and adults. The needs will be different depending on the pathology being treated.
Thus, infant neurological physiotherapy intervenes from the first months of life. Its objective is to favor the maximum motor development of the child, allowing children who have suffered a neurological injury to have an adequate motor development or to reach an optimal motor development. This will allow them to reach a degree of independence in daily tasks.
Neurological physiotherapy in adulthood focuses on two different areas. On the one hand, there will be people with brain damage or injury, caused by acquired brain damage (ABI), traumatic brain injury (TBI), etc.
Its objective will be to achieve physical improvement and enhance the patient's mobility, avoiding postural and movement patterns that cause pain or future malformations. In these cases, the physiotherapist will perform an intervention from the first days until the end of the rehabilitation.
On the other hand we will find the rehabilitation of neuromuscular diseases and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's or multiple sclerosis. These may require a less intense treatment, although a small periodic monitoring to reeducate patterns and maintain all available voluntary control.