PT & OT, What's the difference? - Acidente Vascular Cerebral Center

What is physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy is also known as physical terapia. It's the core of reabilitação tratamento. It uses physical methods such as massage, heat tratamento and exercise rather than drugs or surgery to ajudar pacientes recuperar and melhorar funcional impairment after illness or injury. It's widely usado in neurological reabilitação, musculoskeletal reabilitação, postpartum reabilitação, pediatric reabilitação and other fields. Many people may think physical therapists simply manipulate joints, soft tissue and nerves through mãos-on techniques. In fact, PT is not just Manual Terapia.

 

PT mainly inclui the following three tratamento methods:

Manual terapia

Physical therapists usar their mãos to treat diseases through specific techniques, such as joint mobilization, myofascial release, soft tissue mobilization, strain-counterstrain terapia, etc., to ajudar pacientes recuperar função.

Physical agents modalities

It's a method to study and apply various natural or artificial physical agents on the human body to treat and prevent diseases. The common modalities incluir heat and electrode stimulation. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) that fornece constant estimulação elétrica is an electrical modality that controls pain.

Syrebo TENS terapia dispositivo permite users to lift wrists through estimulação elétrica

Exercise terapia

It is mainly usado to promote movimento, relieve pain, and restore função through funcional exercise. The types of exercise mainly incluir ROM training, muscle strengthening exercise, postural correction training, and neurophysiological terapia.

 

What is occupational terapia?

As an important part of reabilitação, OT is to ajudar people return to society and regain independence. It's usually usado as an auxiliary tratamento for conventional exercise terapia to melhorar pacientes' self-care ability.

OT primarily serves people with neurological injuries and musculoskeletal system diseases. As reabilitação is a long-term process, OT may be slower to achieve results than PT; moreover, pacientes often only focus on recovering membro functions and ignore the significance of funcional recuperação. OT is often overlooked by pacientes.

 

In the OT room, you will see pacientes building blocks, writing, dressing and other activities of daily living. Occupational therapists design an intervention plan according to the paciente's gender, age, interests, educational level, and degree of disability to reach the paciente's goals. OT generally inclui mão-função terapia, cognitive perceptual terapia, mirror terapia, etc., among which mão-função terapia is the most important.

Wooden pegboard training with Syrebo Mão Reabilitação Robô

Eating exercise with Syrebo Mão Reabilitação Robô

Pouring water with Syrebo Mão Reabilitação Robô

Both PT and OT belong to non-drug reabilitação tratamento, and they are both involved in anatomy and neuropsychology. However, they are different in focus. PT focuses on improving people's ability to move. OT focuses on improving their ability to perform activities of daily living. Their tratamento modalities also vary considerably. You pode choose OT or PT depending on your goals and condition.