Research & Publications

PT PRO-S is a monthly article for consumers of physical therapy services written by Michael Wachowiak, PT and staff therapist at the Farmington Hills 1 clinic on the southwest corner of 14 mile and Farmington Rd. This internal journal seeks to educate our community on injury, approaches to solving pain problems, and what may be causing your symptoms.

Background: A recent AAOMPT position paper was published that opposed the use of the term ‘degenerative disc disease’ (DDD), in large part because it appears to be a common age related finding. While common, there are significant physiologic and biomechanical changes that occur as a result of discogenic degeneration, which are relevant to consider during the practice of manual therapy. Written by Douglas Creighton and Brian T. Swanson.

Written by Gwynne Waters DPT, Vice President of Continued Education at Team Rehabilitation. Gwynne is a nationally renowned expert in athlete development, training and rehabilitation. She has treated multiple professional NHL players throughout her years of treating as a physical therapist. She is an advocate for providers continuing to learn to refine their skills and grow as therapists. Gwynne has multiple articles published in medical and physical therapy journals.

Published online April 26th, 2013 by The Society of Behavioral Medicine. Olga Slavin-Spenny, PhD & Mark A. Lumley, PhD & Elyse R. Thakur, MA & Dana C. Nevedal, PhD & Alaa M. Hijazi, PhD. Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches.

Olga M. Slavin-Spenny, Jay L. Cohen, Lindsay M. Oberleitner, and Mark A. Lumley. Published by Wayne State University and John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Research on emotional disclosure should test the effects of different disclosure methods and whether symptoms are affected differently than post-traumatic growth. We randomized 214 participants with unresolved stressful experiences to four disclosure conditions (written, private spoken, talking to a passive listener, talking to an active facilitator) or two control conditions. All groups had one 30-minute session. After 6 weeks, disclosure groups reported more post-traumatic growth than controls, and disclosure conditions were similar in this effect.

Shedeh Tavakoli, Mark A. Lumley, Alaa M. Hijazi, Olga M. Slavin-Spenny, and George P. Parris. Published by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Counseling Psychology. International university students often experience acculturative stress, and culturally appropriate techniques to manage stress are needed. This randomized trial tested the effects of group assertiveness training, private expressive writing, their combination, and a wait-list control on the acculturative stress, affect, and health of 118 international students at an urban North American university. Interventions were conducted at the start of a semester, and assessments were conducted at baseline and at the end of the semester. Group assertiveness training was rated positively by students and led to lower negative affect, whereas expressive writing was less well received and led to higher homesickness and fear, but also to higher positive affect. The combined intervention had no effects, perhaps because the 2 components negated each other. It is concluded that group assertiveness training improves emotional adjustment of international students but that expressive writing has mixed effects and needs further development and study.

Acculturative stress is a common experience for international students and is associated with psychological and physical problems. In a previous study (Tavakoli et al. Journal of Counseling Psychology 56:590-596, 2009), the authors reported that two stress reduction interventions—expressive writing (EW) and assertiveness training (AT)—had limited overall benefits among international students at an American University. The current analyses of data from that study investigated whether individual differences moderated the effects of EW and AT.

Jay L. Cohen, Lindsay M. Sander, Olga M. Slavin and Mark A. Lumley. Published by the British Psychological Society in 2008. Individual differences and method of disclosure may explain variability in the effects of emotional disclosure interventions. We evaluated boundary conditions for written emotional disclosure (WED) by examining baseline distress, emotional approach coping, and attachment quality as moderators of the effects of single-session WED, compared to either interpersonal emotional disclosure (difference in method), or written time management (difference in content).

Authors KENNETH G. HARLAN, ROBERTO B. MERUCCI, JALEN J. WEAVER, THOMAS C. WINDLE, AND MOH H. MALEK unpack pre-exhaustion exercise and how it differentially influences neuromuscular fatigue based on habitual physical activity history. Although there is anecdotal evidence of a potential physiological benefit of pre-exhaustion exercise to enhance muscular recruitment, few studies have systematically examined the effect on neuromuscular activity. This article seeks to contribute to research in this area.

From Dave Fausone in Focus on Therapy. Rotator cuff injury with and without surgical repair is a common diagnosis in multiple rehabilitation settings including home healthcare. Injuries to the four muscles comprising the rotator cuff (the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis muscles) have increased prevalence rates with advancing age. This Focus on Therapy will provide considerations for the care of individuals following rotator cuff injury or surgery.

By R. J. Blaesser, L. M. Couls, C.F.Lee, J. M. Zuniga, M. H. Malek, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. The purposes of this study were to determine if (a) the log-transformed model can be applied to dynamic exercise and (b) the slope and y-intercept terms can provide additional information above and beyond the polynomial regression analyses.

The overhead throwing motion is complex, and restrictions in range of motion (ROM) at the hip may place additional demands on the shoulder that lead to injury. However, the relationship between hip and shoulder ROM in athletes with and without a history of shoulder injury is unknown.

Asymmetries in grasp force matching extend beyond quantifying a single measure of maximum grip strength and advance our application of side-specific treatment interventions. A cross sectional study design investigated grasp-force matching performance in right-handed individuals with a stroke and age-matched healthy controls. A visual representation of the 20% Maximum Voluntary Contraction (MVC) was matched in three conditions in the absence of visual feedback with the same (Ipsilateral Remembered– IR) or opposite hand (Concurrent– CC and Contralateral Remembered– CR). Greater overall relative error (RE) was found in contralateral compared to ipsilateral matching tasks.

Douglas S. Creighton, Physical Therapy Program, School of Health Science, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA * Doug Marsh, Physician and Statistician, Melvindale, MI, USA * Mark Gruca, Team Rehab, Farmington Hills, MI, USA * Melissa Walter, Rochester Hills, MI, USA * Journal of Back and Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation 30 (2017) 1053-1059 * Documenting and describing the effects of an upper cervical (UC) traction based mobilization on participants with restricted and painful cervical rotation and documenting if the mobilization changed blood flow velocity through the vertebral artery.

Doug Creighton, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA * Sarah Cubr, Team Rehabilitation Southfield, Michigan, USA * Alexa Schweiger HealthQuest Chesterfield, Michigan, USA * The purpose of this study was to determine if a gentle form of manual lumbar traction could reduce painful lumbar motions associated with lumbar disc degeneration (LDD). This clinical trial incorporated 134 participants with painful active lumbar motion.

Min H. Huang, Assistant Professor, Physical Therapy Department, University of Michigan–Flint, Flint, MI * Austin Righter, Physical Therapist, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, MI * Tracy Shilling, Physical Therapist, Children’s Therapy Corner, Okemos, MI * Mobility difficulty in cancer survivors is the leading functional problem that impacts independence, participation, and quality of life.

Sara Maher, Melodie Kondratek, John Krauss, Program in Physical Therapy, Oakland University, USA * Doug Creighton, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, MI, USA * Xianggui Qu, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Oakland University, USA * The purpose of this case series was to explore the effects of tibio-femoral (TF) manual traction on pain and passive range of motion (PROM) in individuals with unilateral motion impairment and pain in knee flexion.

Doug Creighton, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, MI, USA * Melodie Kondratek, John Krauss, Peter Huijbregts, Harvey Qu, Department of Physical Therapy, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA * Cervical translatoric spinal manipulation (TSM) techniques have been suggested as a safer alternative to cervical thrust rotatory techniques. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of three C5–C6 non-thrust TSM techniques on vertebral artery (VA) lumen diameter (LD) and two blood flow velocity parameters. The two-tailed research hypothesis was that the TSM techniques would result in a significant change (increase or decrease) in blood flow velocity and arterial LD at the C5–C6 intertransverse portion of the VA.

Doug Creighton, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, MI, John Krauss, PhD, PT, OCS, FAAOMPT, Melodie Kondratek, DScPT, OMPT, Peter A. Huijbregts, PT, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT, FCAMT, Andrea Will, DPT, OMPT. The currently most plausible pathophysiologic theory for the etiology of pain in patients with patellofemoral pain syndrome involves abnormal mechanical stress to the patellofemoral joint. At this time, there is no consensus nor is there a sufficient body of research evidence to guide management of patients with patellofemoral pain syndrome. This means that clinicians have to rely to some extent on a mechanism-based approach.

Douglas S. Creighton, DPT, OCS, FAAOMPT, Team Rehabilitation Farmington Hills, MI, USA * John Krauss PhD, PT, OCS, FAAOMPT * Beth Marcoux, PhD, PT * Lumbar spinal stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal or intervertebral foramen that can produce low back pain and leg pain and weakness. Surgical intervention is commonly performed to relieve these symptoms. Symptom reduction and longitudinal management of functional deficits with conservative care is less well documented.