The Acute Effects of Pragmatic Manual Therapy on the Range of Motion of Shoulder Joint

Current studies on the mechanism of subacromial impingement and other shoulder pathology reveal that multiple factors are responsible for impingement. These include serratus anterior dysfunction, rotator cuff insufficiency, posterior capsular tightness, acromioclavicular joint, thoracic spine stiffness and extensibility of the pectoralis minor and subclavius muscles. Manual intervention should therefore address these issues in conjunction with the other therapies. Novel interventions have been designed pilot tested for each of these factors to produce a healing environment. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of each individual factor and combination of all on the range of motion of shoulder joint in healthy subjects and subjects with a restricted range of motion of shoulder joint respectively. The subject will be allocated randomly into four groups with respect to objective 1 and each of the groups will be evaluated as a quasi-experiment design (pretest-posttest) for healthy each of 30 subjects. Beneficial intervention among the four trials and other previously reported beneficial in improving the shoulder joint range will be combined in and termed as pragmatic intervention protocols. Pragmatic interventions on subjects with the restricted range in shoulder pathology will be tested through a similar design. The effects of these interventions on the Quality of life measured through the Urdu version of Shoulder pain and disability in subjects with shoulder pathology will also be tested.