Osteopathic therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractic care and massage share a common philosophy: The integrity of the spine is important in ensuring good health. In fact, this philosophy is shared by almost all traditional healing arts, including yoga, tai chi and chi gong. It is also found in many modern complementary and alternative treatment modalities, including Alexander Technique and Structural Integration, which is also known as Rolfing.

The main difference is their approach to care. While Physiotherapists evolved out of a combination of massage, manual therapy and rehabilitative exercises. Chiropractic has evolved from the use of spinal manipulations to treat pain and dysfunction. As such, physiotherapists still tend to use more massage, manual therapy and exercises, while chiropractors tend to utilize far more manipulation during treatments.

Physiotherapy often deals with a specific protocol or rehabilitation of a specific area, joint, tissue or nerve. They focus on a specific rehab protocol to get that part back to its optimum functioning state.

Chiropractic

The traditional approach is through the use of various diagnostic methods to find the poorly functioning spinal or other joints and then using many different adjusting methods to correct spinal segments to improve the overall function and attain optimum health for the patient. In the past chiropractic branched off in different specialties like back pain, neck pain, sports injury, and the treatment of all the other joints in the body. But one of the fundamental premises that the chiropractic philosophy revolves around is the concept of adjustment of the spinal segments, which improves function and optimizes well-being.

At the Emirates European Medical Centre, we use a combination of both chiropractic and physical therapy treatments to ensure that the patient achieves the best possible outcome in the shortest time. The chiropractic doctor designs the protocol and when he or she feels it would increase the success of the treatment this may include massage, acupuncture non surgical spinal decompression therapy and rehabilitation. Throughout the course of the treatment the chiropractic doctor remains in charge of the progress and will dictate the ongoing treatment protocol, although our fully qualified physical therapists often come up with suggestions and collaborate with the doctors about individual patient treatments.

Sometimes it is best to have the physical therapy or massage treatment after the chiropractic session and others it is better to complete it before. This may vary from patient to patient.