Great Post! Pulsed MET or Isometric Manipulation

via Chaitow's Chat

I follow Paris' Manual Therapy Triad for treatment 1) STM 2) Joint Manipulation 3) Neuromuscular Reeducation

Part 3 can be anything from stretching, to PNF, to ther ex in the new movement plane or pattern. I think PNF is done an injustice in entry level DPT schools because most teach only in the neuro rehab courses. A colleague of mine teaching ortho at D'Youville College tells his students that EVERY patient is an orthopaedic patient. Similarly, you can use PNF on any patient needing their muscles facilitated. Paris states we shouldn't call MET by osteopathic terminology as they don't use our nomenclature for techniques. He prefers the term isometric manipulation. They're all just variations on basic PNF, whether it's hold relax or contract relax. As a new grad, I read Chaitow's newests texts at the time, which still hold up today. I am looking forward to his updates.

I only use PNF after doing STM and JM, my colleague in the clinic uses PNF to warm up his patients prior to JM. While the evidence is limited to some trials for increasing ROM in normals, it still remains an effective and pain free technique to increase ROM. I do not recommend using it isolation of other manual techniques as I found clinically that the ROM improvements did not last as long without using other techniques such as STM and JM along with it.