The new Humanitas Medical Care outpatient clinic in Via Domodossola, right in the center of Milan, offers its patients a range of services in many fields, including osteopathy. Manual medicine par excellence, osteopathy joins the practices of traditional medicine in order to find the right way to reduce pain and increase well being of the patient. With this practice you can treat the most diverse disorders for each age group, thanks to the valuable collaboration with other specialists who deal with physiotherapy, orthopedics and psychotherapy. We asked Dr. Andrea Ferrarini, a specialist in the Osteopathy clinic, who has a long experience in the field, to explain to us what this therapy consists of and to whom it is addressed.
Why osteopathy?
Osteopathy is a therapy that is based on manual contact for the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. The aim of osteopathy is the euthony of the patient, that is to try to make him feel good, to restore him a good state of health without going too far to affect his chances.
“A good osteopath – explains Dr. Ferrarini – always starts from the evaluation of the patient as a whole, through specific tests and manual investigations, and from the study of all the diagnostic apparatus provided (x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging, etc.). Therefore, applying his own knowledge, he goes on to identify the most suitable manual techniques for the recovery of the subject’s functions and the restoration of his lost psycho-physical balance”.
Osteopathy therefore has an extremely wide field of action. For athletes, it deals with any type of structural alteration of the subject: from joint problems or muscular distractions to pathologies affecting the back, to the recovery of tissue elasticity, or to cervical problems. It has been found that with osteopathy, through specific manipulations and massages, excellent results are obtained.
Visceral osteopathy, on the other hand, corrects the imbalance resulting from the painful symptom, identifying the functional alterations of the subject such as, for example, constipation, gastropathy, recurrent gastritis, small hiatal hernias, which in some cases can be treated.
“The osteopath studies very carefully the primary lesions from which a disease has arisen – added the doctor; many pathologies of a psychological type, such as depression and altered mental states, have a structural correlation and vice versa. For example, we will never see a depressed subject with an upright, open posture. On the contrary, he is more easily subject to diseases affecting the back because he always tends to assume a curved position. Therefore, even working on the structural aspect it is possible to modify in part the emotional-psychological aspect of the subject”.
A valid remedy for all ages
“Our patients range from 5 to 85 years”, explains the osteopath. “Obviously, in the elderly person there will be a pathology such as arthrosis or alteration of the muscles, while in the young person (from 7 to 45 years) there will be an acute traumatic pathology (distorting trauma or capsular lesion) or a mechanical problem”.
Osteopathy is almost exclusively based on manual therapy, but additional techniques can also be used, such as:
The neuromuscular bandage (taping) to resolve certain situations outside the immediate treatment, then keeping a muscle, a tendon or a ligament in discharge to be able to recover it first.
Nogier’s auriculotherapy to stimulate points in the ear that, according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, promote even faster recovery of the disease. “The auriculotherapy is a method created in 1956 by the doctor Paul Nogier of Lyon, who had the brilliant intuition to visualize a human fetus ready to be born inside the auricle. This technique is based on the assumption that there are areas in the ear cup that are connected to a precise anatomical structure of the human body,” the doctor explains.
In my work there is not only mechanical manipulation – specifies Dr. Ferrarini -, but also tissue preparation and doctor-patient interaction and empathy that I believe is the basis of my profession.
The strength of a synergistic treatment that is easy to access
“Osteopathic treatment is absolutely synergistic and complementary to that of other specialists working in the same structure,” says the expert. “Personally, I collaborate with physiatrists and orthopedists who, knowing my working method, send their patients for a complete resolution of the problem. In the Osteopathy Centre of Humanitas Medical Care Domodossola a patient suffering from any structural pathology can rely on and be followed by a team of health professionals who act in harmony to recover his deficits as much as possible, choosing together the best solution.
Patients can access the outpatient clinic either privately, when they autonomously decide to carry out an osteopathy session, by sending a booking request via the web. Or they are invited by specialists (psychologist, physiatrist, orthopedist) for an osteopathic evaluation of support every time you are faced with the impossibility of making a correct diagnosis and, therefore, to solve the problem of the subject.
