Importance of Neural Biomechanics for Under Graduate Students of Physiotherapy – A Descriptive Study

Introduction and Purpose of the study

The current trend for physiotherapists in manual therapy is Neural Mobilization, which is applying widely in Radiculopathy patients after neural tension tests with may not having adequate knowledge about Neural-Biomechanics and can leads to treatment less effective. The primary purpose of this study was to describe the importance of neural-biomechanics for under graduate students of physiotherapy.

Materials and Method

A descriptive study was done for Physiotherapists in three month duration. Initially One-hundred-and-fifty-five Physiotherapists were responded for the questionnaire through email from all over India by snow ball sampling. Then thirty-four respondents were excluded (Therapists not consulting / treating radiculopathy patients were excluded) and finally one-hundredand- twenty-one respondents were selected on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Results

After taken the percentages of respondents from the questionnaire, Chi Square test was performed in various focuses to find out the relationship between them. There was a highly significant relationship between the experience of the therapists and the level of knowledge about neural-biomechanics, ÷2 = 107.58 with d.f-3, (P<0.001) and a significant relationship between the reasons for not assessing the neural tension tests and complications of neural tension tests, ÷2 = 43.1 with d.f-1, (P<0.001)

Conclusion

The Neural-Biomechanics was not included in Physiotherapy curriculum of under graduates in all over India. This may be the important reason for less effective of neural mobilization and also the cause for complications of Neural Tension tests in Radiculopathy Patients. All the respondents of this study were given suggestion to give more importance to include as a separate chapter of Neural-Biomechanics in Biomechanics of Under-graduate curriculum.