French Physical Therapy Technique Effective in Patients With Refractory Chronic Back Pain

A physical therapy technique known as Souchard's global postural re-education (GPR) restores most people to complete activities of daily living and therefore produces results that are superior to other conservative interventions or surgery, according to a team of Argentine investigators GPR consists of a series of maneuvers in which the patient is in the supine, sitting, and standing positions. The physical therapist's maneuvers involve stretching the paraspinal muscles and those of the abdominal wall so that the joints are relieved of the compression that is typically the source of their pain. The technique is named after the French physical therapist who developed it, Philippe Souchard, and was originally intended as a treatment for scoliosis. Treatment is typically at least four months in duration, with two to four sessions or more the first week, depending on the severity of the patient's condition, and then once weekly thereafter.