Back and Neck Care

 Program Overview

Back pain is among the most common and costly health complaints in society. According to many estimates, four out of five people will suffer from back pain sometime during their lives. Most back and neck pains don’t disappear by themselves. When you have pain and immobility in the back and neck, you need help regaining your freedom of movement and freedom from pain.

As manual physical therapists, with advanced training and decades of combined experience, we use clinically proven manual techniques. We treat, and alleviate, low back pain, neck pain and other hard-to-treat conditions caused by many types of injuries.

AMPT’s therapists thoroughly evaluate your health and pain history first. We look at all areas of your life – not just your injured area. This highly detailed evaluation gives us a complete understanding of how your pain evolved (traumatic injury, gradual injury or injury that appeared “out of the blue”), what positions make the pain better or worse and what daily or work activities you perform that may contribute to your pain.

We thoroughly check range of motion, motor control, relative and through range flexibility, strength (concentric, eccentric and static), posture and whatever other issues that may affect your pain experience. At AMPT, we create a customized treatment program based on our findings. Our manual physical therapists continually collaborate with patients to fully customize treatment to the individual’s particular needs.

Whiplash, for example, occurs when rapid movement of the head and neck is caused by an auto accident or other traumatic event. Vertebrae, ligaments, tendons, muscles, nerves and spinal discs all become rapidly stretched and compressed. The result is often severe soft-tissue and possibly bone trauma. The resulting pain can sometimes take a long time to settle. The symptoms may not subside and, in complex cases, the person may have severe long-term limitations in neck movement. Thorough accurate manual physical therapy assessment is essential for obtaining relief and improving function!

Some of the approaches we use utilize the following:

Orthopedic Manual Therapy

This specialized form of manual physical therapy utilizes the therapists’ hands and intellect to thoroughly assess and treat your problem area. It involves a complex clinical reasoning process that integrates all the information that we are continually gathering about you to fully interpret your pain. Our therapists are highly trained in this skill, which ultimately speeds up your recovery! 

At AMPT, this specialized therapy combines massage, joint and nerve mobilizations, manipulations, stretching, strengthening, work transition training, coordination training, joint and core stability and education to give you the best possible results.

Joint, Nerve and Soft Tissue Mobilization

These hands-on manual treatments reduce pain, improve circulation, extensibility and mobility in the neck and back and generally make you “Feel great”. They involve mobilizing, or moving, joints, nerves and soft tissues that are involved in an injury.  We have hand crafted our own massage tools, specifically to “Iron out” deep thickened muscle knots and trigger points that can cause pain and stiffness.

Core Stability Training

Modern research has shown that when core stability training is combined with manual therapy, outcomes are greatly improved for back and neck injuries. This is also evidenced by the popularity of Pilates which is said to stabilize (or strengthen) the back from minor issues of hypermobility (or excessive spinal movement).

AMPT manual therapists thoroughly assess your vertebral mobility and core strength to tailor a specific stabilization program for your neck, back or any other area, that gets you back in action - quickly.

Pain Sciences

Our thorough understanding of the “Science of Pain” further separates us from the competition. Our Pain Elimination Program integrates this highly complex science into all our evaluations and treatments for every patient, especially chronic-pain patients. This aids in a much faster recovery and improved long-term outcomes.

The latest research shows that a long-term injury causes the nerve pathways to change in the brain and the spinal cord. They become sensitized and change how pain is perceived in the brain - like the “Volume is turned up”. The brain undergoes perceptual changes of the injured body part that can include making it feel bigger (like how your lip feels bigger, but actually isn’t, after dental work).

The most advanced manual physical therapy is currently aimed at addressing these issues with specific retraining techniques that normalize the brain’s perceptions to improve long term outcomes.

Car and Work Ergonomic Assessments

When needed, a thorough assessment of your car or work area can provide very simple solutions to long-standing ergonomic issues, thus making treatment more effective.

A New Gold Standard

AMPT’s comprehensive back, neck and spinal care program draws on a vast myriad of advanced evaluation, clinical reasoning and treatment techniques to determine the cause, contributing factors and best treatment options for your back. Our unique one-on-one approach and highly skilled manual therapists set new gold standards in this competitive industry by providing you with the following:

• Highly advanced manual therapists 
• Expert joint mobilizations and manipulations
  
• Skilled deep soft tissue mobilization and massage
  
• Extreme expertise in nerve mobilizations
  
• Pain Elimination Program - not just pain management!
  
• Muscle imbalance assessment
  
• Core strength and stability
  
• Unique Workers’ Compensation Program 

Please call us for more information about treating back and neck pain with effective manual physical therapy programs from AMPT.

As always, we encourage you to ask your doctor about referring you to AMPT.