What is Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation?

Physiotherapy and rehabilitation is a set of activities aimed at making the individual able to perform daily life activities independently by eliminating functional losses or inadequacies caused by diseases, accidents, traumas, pain and other reasons with multi-faceted treatments and applications.

What is Physical Therapy?

It is used to relieve problems such as pain, edema, inflammation, muscle stiffness and muscle spasm that restrict muscle work, by applying the physical agents selected in accordance with the person’s problem in the right dose and time. The most commonly used physical agents for this purpose are superficial heat applications such as infrared, hot pack, paraffin, deep heat applications such as ultrasound and short wave diathermy, electrical currents, massage and traction.

Physiotherapy is actually a complementary and auxiliary part of the treatment, not the basis of the treatment. It provides quick relief and relieves pain, rather than providing complete and permanent recovery on its own. It is possible to achieve more permanent results with rehabilitation in order to reach the pre-disease skill level and life comfort.

What is Rehabilitation?

Rehabilitation is a very comprehensive term and its lexical meaning is regaining lost functions. It is a process that is longer than physical therapy and requires the active participation and effort of the patient in the treatment.

The concept of rehabilitation was introduced in Europe and the USA as a result of the need for treatment of diseases and disabilities after the 1st and 2nd World Wars. has also emerged. In Turkey, rehabilitation practices started in the following years with the contributions of valuable scientists who went abroad and received training in this new field.

Rehabilitation was previously defined only as the ‘medical treatment of injuries’. Later, the scope of this definition was expanded. Rehabilitation is defined as all the work done to partially or completely eliminate diseases with drugs, surgery, physical methods and assistive devices and to ensure the independence of the patient in physical, mental, social and economic terms.

Rehabilitation work should be carried out by a team, not by a single person. Rehabilitation team consists of physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists, physiotherapists and experts from other disciplines.