Postural pattern alterations in orthopaedics and neurological canine patients: Postural evaluation and postural rehabilitation techniques

Physiotherapeutic analysis, including postural evaluation of the patient, is very important in rehabilitative medicine (Basaglia, 2000). Patients with locomotory problems often present altered body and movement patterns. Body Pattern (SC) is defined as: ‘‘the sensation that everyone has of their body position in space and of its movement, formed on the basis of proprioceptive information integrated by visual afferences’’ (Buzzi et al., 1996). In physiology this concept is defined as kinaesthesia (Mountcastle, 1977) or somatic sensation (Ruch, 1976). Posture is defined as the position the body adopts in space by means of the tonic activity of muscles acting against gravity (Villeneuve, 1996). Modifications of this body pattern happen, for example, when there is pain in the locomotory apparatus or elsewhere, which leads to a reduction of the range of the movements, to anthalgic and compensatory postures and to substitutive movements or ‘‘tricks’’. This situation induces incorrect motory patterns and new body representations which are memorised by the nervous system. The aim of ‘‘neuromotory reprogramming’’ is to re-establish the normal body and global kinetic patterns by means of active proprioceptor stimulation and suitable postural exercises. In this paper we wish to present a rehabilitating postural methodology, in which global postural exercises, both static and dynamic, are added to the normal rehabilitation program. The exercise technique needs to be ‘‘global’’ as in nature there is no such thing as an isolated single muscle contraction (muscular chains mechanism), as the Nervous System regulates movement as a whole (Souchard, 1994).