Steps to Follow: The Comprehensive Treatment of Patients with Hemiplegia

By Patricia M. Davies

Book Overview

A true paradigm shift is taking place in the field of neurology. Earlier it was regarded as the science of exact diagnosis of incurable illnesses, re- signed to the dogma that damage to the central nervous system could not be repaired: "Once development is complete, the sources of growth and regeneration ofaxons and dendrites are irretrievably lost. In the adult brain the nerve paths are fixed and immutable - everything can die, but nothing can be regenerated" (Cajal1928). Even then this could have been countered with what holds today: rehabilitation does not take place in the test tube, being supported only a short time later by an authoritative source, the professor of neurology and neurosurgery in Breslau, Otfried Foerster. He wrote a 100-page article about thera- peutic exercises which appeared in the Handbuch der Neurologie (also published by Springer-Verlag). The following sentences from his intro- duction illustrate his opinion of the importance of therapeutic exercises and areclose to our views today (Foerster 1936): "There is no doubt that most motor disturbances caused by lesions of the nervous system are more or less completely compensated as a re- sult of a tendency inherent to the organism to carry out as expedient- ly as possible the tasks of which it is capable under normal circum- stances, using all the forces still available to it with the remaining un- damaged parts of the nervous system, even following injury to its sub-

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 354060720X
• ISBN13: 9783540607205
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 514 Pages
• Weight: 2.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Good book, but advanced

A very good book, but advanced for the new grad (at least it was for me). It does contain wonderful information and utilizes NDT. It certainly is easier to understand after an intro NDT course teaches the basics. I dig this book out from time to time to freshen up my skills with CVA patients.

Great Book

Great book with many guidelines for physios and homecarer's. Comprehensive how to's with many pictures. It's really a steps to follow manual.

A must for any therapist working with adult CVA!

Patricia Davies Gives very descriptive, practical approaches that work. Even if you have not had specific NDT training, you can, as a therapist, learn from, and follow her approach. There are plenty of pictures to help guide. If you are a physical or occupational therapist even attempting to work with adults who have had neuro. dysfunction, you owe it to them to read this book!