PT & OT, What's the difference? - Centro de Ictus

What is physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy is also known as physical terapia. It's the core of rehabilitación tratamiento. It uses physical methods such as massage, heat tratamiento and exercise rather than drugs or surgery to help patients recover and mejorar functional impairment after illness or lesión. It's widely used in neurological rehabilitación, musculoskeletal rehabilitación, postpartum rehabilitación, pediatric rehabilitación and other fields. Many people may think physical therapists simply manipulate joints, soft tissue and nerves through hands-on techniques. In fact, PT is not just Manual Terapia.

 

PT mainly includes the following three tratamiento methods:

Manual terapia

Physical therapists use their hands to treat diseases through specific techniques, such as joint mobilization, myofascial release, soft tissue mobilization, strain-counterstrain terapia, etc., to help patients recover función.

Physical agents modalities

It's a method to study and apply various natural or artificial physical agents on the human body to treat and prevent diseases. The common modalities include heat and electrode stimulation. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) that provides constant electrical stimulation is an electrical modality that controls dolor.

Syrebo TENS terapia dispositivo enables users to lift wrists through electrical stimulation

Exercise terapia

It is mainly used to promote movimiento, relieve dolor, and restore función through functional exercise. The types of exercise mainly include ROM training, músculo strengthening exercise, postural correction training, and neurophysiological terapia.

 

What is occupational terapia?

As an important part of rehabilitación, OT is to help people return to society and regain independence. It's usually used as an auxiliary tratamiento for conventional exercise terapia to mejorar patients' self-care ability.

OT primarily serves people with neurological injuries and musculoskeletal system diseases. As rehabilitación is a long-term process, OT may be slower to achieve results than PT; moreover, patients often only focus on recovering limb functions and ignore the significance of functional recuperación. OT is often overlooked by patients.

 

In the OT room, you will see patients building blocks, writing, dressing and other activities of daily living. Occupational therapists design an intervention plan according to the paciente's gender, age, interests, educational level, and degree of disability to reach the paciente's goals. OT generally includes mano-función terapia, cognitive perceptual terapia, mirror terapia, etc., among which mano-función terapia is the most important.

Wooden pegboard training with Syrebo Mano Rehabilitación Robot

Eating exercise with Syrebo Mano Rehabilitación Robot

Pouring water with Syrebo Mano Rehabilitación Robot

Both PT and OT belong to non-drug rehabilitación tratamiento, and they are both involved in anatomy and neuropsychology. However, they are different in focus. PT focuses on improving people's ability to move. OT focuses on improving their ability to perform activities of daily living. Their tratamiento modalities also vary considerably. You can choose OT or PT depending on your goals and condition.