Simona Maria Carmignano

By Raoul Saggini, Rosa Grazia Bellomo, Simona Maria Carmignano and Andrea Saggini

Part of the book: Updates on Cancer Treatment

By Raoul Saggini, Simona Maria Carmignano, Lucia Cosenza, Tommaso Palermo and Rosa Grazia Bellomo

Sarcopenia is a complex problem and an important emerging field in rehabilitation of the elderly. In 2010, the European working group on sarcopenia in older people (EWGSOP) described sarcopenia as a syndrome characterised by progressive and generalised loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength, associated with a risk of adverse outcomes such as physical disability, poor quality of life and death. This field of rehabilitation has been defined as ‘evaluative, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions whose purpose is to restore functional ability or enhance residual functional capability in elderly people with disabling impairments’. With growing numbers of frail older people, there is an increasing need for appropriate geriatric rehabilitation services. Definitely, sarcopenia needs a specific rehabilitation program to improve muscular mass and strength that must be integrated with a global approach with the aim to recover postural assessment, amplify sensory‐motor systems, in order to gain the necessary information for proper motor planning, to reduce risk of falls. Several physical agents in medicine permit to treat sarcopenia, like vibrations or electrical stimulation. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview about rehabilitative medicine for sarcopenia, highlighting the state of the art, presenting the most significative clinical researches and giving some inputs to set a rehabilitation protocol.

Part of the book: Frailty and Sarcopenia

By Raoul Saggini, Simona Maria Carmignano, Lucia Cosenza, Tommaso Palermo and Rosa Grazia Bellomo

Shoulder pain is a common problem and it is responsible for a high proportion of patients presenting to general practice, causing work absenteeism and claims for sickness. A lot of factors and conditions can contribute to shoulder pain. The most prevalent cause is rotator cuff tendinitis; its relevance is correlated not only to its high prevalence rate but also to the fact that is disabling, causing high direct and indirect cost in industrialized country. Other causes of shoulder pain are shoulder impingement syndrome, calcific tendonitis, frozen shoulder, etc. In this context, physical medicine and rehabilitation plays a fundamental role. The conservative approach consists of several interventions. The aim is to decrease shoulder pain and to regain shoulder function, with the goal to reduce the degree of impingement, decreasing swelling and inflammation, and to minimize the risk of further injuries. The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview about shoulder disorders and their conservative treatment by means of physical therapy.

Part of the book: Advances in Shoulder Surgery

By Simona Maria Carmignano

Chronic wounds are wounds, which failed healing and timely reparative process to produce anatomic and functional integrity over a period of 3 months. New physical therapy for chronic wounds is extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT). ESWT generators can be focused, defocused, and radial. ESWT is non-invasiveness, low-associated complication rates, efficacy for indications refractory to other standards of practice, and cost-effectiveness. ESWT determines mechanotransduction that is possible as most of the cells of the body, thank to surface receptors and other transmission signals. In the specific field of ESWT, different biochemical substances are able to influence the processes of different cell lineages, besides to induce the formation of new small blood vessels. So, ESWT enhanced cell proliferation at the local wound tissue level, stimulated extracellular matrix metabolism, decreased apoptosis, and downregulated oxygen-mediated burst of leukocytes, probably stimulating homing and differentiation of stem cells with high tissue regenerating potential. From numerous experimental and clinical data, it is possible to conclude that ESWT would improve not only the wounds healing process but also the regeneration events.

Part of the book: Physical Therapy Effectiveness

By Simona Maria Carmignano

Frozen shoulder, or adhesive capsulitis, is a condition caused by impaired soft tissues and the articular capsule of the shoulder. Although the precise etiology remains unclear, recent evidence identifies elevated serum cytokine levels as part of the process. It is characterized by an insidious and progressive loss of active and passive mobility in the glenohumeral joint presumably due to capsular contracture. Several treatments are recognized and utilized to reduce pain and improve range-of-motion faster than the disease’s natural history course. The chapter aims to spread knowledge about this often-misunderstood pathology and to highlight the role of the rehabilitative therapeutic approach.

Part of the book: Shoulder Surgery for RC Pathology, Arthropathy and Tumors