Rehabilitologist

The specialists of the World Health Organization define rehabilitation (restoration) as a set of measures that should ensure adaptation to new living conditions for people with any functional disorders that arose as a result of illnesses and injuries. And the implementation of this "set of measures" is carried out by rehabilitation medicine - a separate area of clinical medicine, in which special doctors - rehabilitation specialists work.

It should be clarified that a rehabilitation specialist deals with medical rehabilitation, while psychological, professional and social rehabilitation is the area of activity of other specialists.

Who is a rehabilitation specialist?

Who is a rehabilitation specialist? It is no exaggeration to say that a rehabilitation specialist is a special doctor who is needed by every patient who has completely or partially lost the ability to perform some functions due to illness, surgery or injury.

According to statistics from the same World Health Organization, as a result of strokes alone, almost 30 million people around the world have become disabled, that is, have lost the functional capabilities of various body systems and the musculoskeletal system. At the same time, a third of them cannot do without outside help, and 20% cannot move without a stick, crutches or "walkers".

And although after ischemic or hemorrhagic strokes, full restoration of body functions is considered impossible, the rehabilitation specialist makes every effort and applies all available rehabilitation methods in order to restore a person’s ability to independently solve everyday problems, promotes the development of compensatory functions of the body, and strives to prevent the development of pathological processes associated with loss of mobility.

In solving the problem of limiting normal functions associated with contracture and stiffness of joints, tissue atrophy, disruption of various organs and systems, pills alone, that is, exclusively medication, are not enough. Here, the whole range of methods used by a rehabilitation specialist is needed, namely: exercise therapy, physiotherapy, massage, reflexology, balneotherapy.

When should you contact a rehabilitation specialist?

Long-term treatment with strict bed rest or prolonged forced stay in a lying position lead to partial muscle atrophy. And this is the case when you should contact a rehabilitation specialist. Because at the recovery stage, a properly selected individual rehabilitation course will help restore muscle tone and speed up metabolic processes in tissues, organs and body systems.

A rehabilitation physician will also help restore the full range of motion in joints in the case of fractures and sprains, relieve pain and swelling after injuries to the musculoskeletal system, improve the condition and increase the level of physical activity after a stroke, paresis or paralysis.

In addition, physical exercises, massage, and physiotherapy are useful for those who often complain of headaches and back pain. Contact a rehabilitation specialist who will give recommendations on how to get rid of the above symptoms without any medications. For example, he will refer you to a course of kinesitherapy, which allows you to strengthen the musculoskeletal system and get rid of intervertebral disc herniation, as well as prolong the remission of many neurological and musculoskeletal diseases.

What tests should be taken when contacting a rehabilitation specialist? If there is a referral for a course of rehabilitation after a certain disease or injury, then you should have a medical history and the results of previous examinations. When seeking a consultation to improve your health, you need to do an ECG, take an X-ray, and take a general blood test and a general urine test.

What diagnostic methods does a rehabilitation specialist use?

The main diagnostic methods used in restorative medicine are fundamentally no different from those adopted in other special areas of clinical medicine. These are radiography, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and electromyogram (determination of electrical muscle activity).

Most often, after an operation or treatment of a disease in a hospital, the patient already has all the data obtained on the basis of the conducted studies in the medical history. Therefore, the diagnostic methods used by the rehabilitation specialist depend on the nature of the surgical intervention and the underlying disease.

What does a rehabilitation therapist do?

The duties of a rehabilitation specialist include, first of all, a comprehensive objective assessment of the patient's health condition after completion of therapeutic treatment or surgical intervention for an established diagnosis. This provides the basis for determining the real possibility of functional restoration (complete or partial) of the damaged organ or system.

What else does a rehabilitation specialist do? Based on a comprehensive assessment of a person's condition, the specialist draws up a medical rehabilitation program, which specifies the stages of its implementation and the main methods - the most adequate and most effective. Moreover, this plan is individual for each case.

In addition to determining the total volume and intensity of physical activity, the rehabilitation specialist must clearly divide the entire rehabilitation process into stages and make a forecast for the development of the patient’s adaptive and compensatory capabilities (for a specific disease or injury).

Today, rehabilitation medical care is not limited to a set of exercises for developing joints or muscles. Physiotherapists, massage therapists, psychologists, speech therapists, and nutritionists take part in the rehabilitation process.

What diseases does a rehabilitation specialist treat?

As strange as it may sound, a rehabilitation specialist does not treat diseases in the usual sense of the term: this is done by his predecessors - specialists in surgery, cardiology, orthopedics, traumatology, neurology, etc. As a rule, a patient comes to a rehabilitation specialist with existing consequences of some injury or after surgical or conservative treatment of a certain disease. This is what determines what diseases a rehabilitation specialist treats.

But it is the rehabilitation doctor who helps a person to fully recover. After all, the key goal of any rehabilitation course is to relieve the patient from the forced limitation of certain capabilities and to restore lost functions as fully as possible.

Depending on the nature of the illness, operation or injury, rehabilitation will have a clearly defined focus - orthopedic, neurological and neurosurgical, or cardiological.

Orthopedic rehabilitation is carried out after physical injuries, as well as after surgery for various pathologies of the musculoskeletal system and musculoskeletal system.

Neurological and neurosurgical rehabilitation is carried out after injury to the brain or spinal cord, after surgical treatment of diseases of the brain and spinal cord, as well as after treatment of diseases of the peripheral nervous system. Most often, people who have suffered a stroke, paresis or paralysis need complex neurological rehabilitation. And the treatment of complications after a heart attack is carried out by cardiac rehabilitation, which is also carried out by a rehabilitation specialist.

Advice from a rehabilitation physician

"Nothing exhausts and destroys a person as much as prolonged physical inactivity." These words belong to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. But every rehabilitation specialist could subscribe to them.

What advice do healthy people need from a rehabilitation doctor? The most important advice is to value health and take care of it. But it is difficult to give advice to those who are unhealthy and, moreover, are deprived of the opportunity to take a leisurely walk in the park, run with children, come to work and do their usual activities...

There is such a vascular pathology of the brain and spinal cord - cavernoma. This disease develops slowly and is discovered completely by accident, when a person comes with complaints of headaches, deterioration of vision, weakness of the limbs and partial loss of sensitivity in them. The most severe complication of cavernoma is hemorrhage, which leads either to paralysis or death.

Theodore Rummel, a successful orthopedic surgeon from St. Peters, Missouri, was diagnosed with the disease in 2009, and a year later, a cavernoma hemorrhage paralyzed him: the lower part of his body was completely paralyzed, and he was forced to move to a wheelchair. The rehabilitation course lasted more than two years. And as a result, last fall, Dr. Rummel again "stood" at the operating table - in a specially designed wheelchair that can take a vertical position and hold a person's body fixed in it.

There are many examples of how rehabilitation helped people overcome self-pity, improve their well-being and even return to an active life. The main thing is to set a goal and achieve it through “I can’t”. And a good rehabilitation specialist can help with this.

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