Fascial Distortion Model (FDM) – An Effective Method for the Treatment of Shoulder Pain

BACKGROUND: First line therapy for the treatment of shoulder complaints are physiotherapy, steroid injection and NSAIDs. However, there is little evidence to support these treatments [6;8]. Additional Manipulative therapy (MT) showed beneficial effects [5;7]. The Fascial Distortion Model includes manipulative treatment and showed good clinical results for the treatment of shoulder disorders. Therefore, we tested the efficacy in a randomized clinical trial.

METHODS: 59 patients were randomized and divided into 2 groups. One group (n=29) was treated with “classic” manipulative therapy – the other group (n=30) was treated with FDM manipulative techniques. The FDM diagnosis system mostly consists of the so called body language (BL). For this purpose the physician interprets the different gestures and the verbally described pain to diagnose the fascial distortion. 4 Medical School, Institute for Biometry, Hannover, Germany Medical School, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Hannover, Germany;
All Patients received 4 interventions of manual therapy or FDM- Treatment within 2 weeks. Abduction (digital Photo – ROM measurement), functional handicap (Constant-Murley Score & DASH-Score), pain (VAS) and strength (Biodex System 3) were measured. There were 2 recalls (2 weeks and 6 weeks) post- treatment to see the effects of the treatments without therapy.

RESULTS: The MT-group showed significant differences in almost all parameters that were measured (p<0.05). That is comparable to the outcomes of other researchers [5]. However, the FDM-Group showed positive significant differences to the MT-group.

CONCLUSIONS: The FDM-System comprises an innovative and practicable diagnosis and treatment system. The outcome of this is a manipulative therapy which seems to be more effective than “classic” manual therapy for shoulder disorders.