METHOD

While keeping the priority on therapeutic efficacy and on the simplicity of the techniques, our approach relies on :

• The requirement of the scientific proof and model

• The pluridisciplinarity of the research

• The necessity of objectivity and quantification

Guy Postiaux's method is based on new therapeutic concepts objectivated by necessary scientific demonstrations.

Guy Postiaux demonstrated that :

• Bronchial secretions are mobilized against gravitation and not towards it like is generally aknowledged, which invalidates the notion of postural drainage.

• Slow expirations have a clearance effect mostly directed on small airways and must be prefered to forced expirations that take over from slow expirations

• Slow inspirations have a preferential clearance action on the peripheral lung.

• Extrathoracic airway osbtruction requires mechanical treatment and new techniques in pediatric care

Those principles allowed the set up of new techniques (nCPT)of bronchopulmonary physiotherapy:

Guy Postiaux

• is the inventor of ELTGOL and of EDIC, clearance techniques dedicated to the adult and adolescent, and of  ELPr, PTE et Pval to the infant

• has brought the first elements validating nCPT of the infant bronchiolitis among others

• has set up a method of clinical evaluation and specific physiotherapy of the infant bronchopulmonary obstruction: "Specific Physiotherapic Assessment of Bronchopulmonary obstruction", the specific physiotherapic bronchopulmonary assessment 

• has proven auscultation could be considered a direct objective reference for the physiotherapist

• has demonstrated that postural drainage and clapping (cCPT) must be considered like obsolete techniques but also not poorly efficient

• is the co-inventor with Dr E. Lens of a automatic measurement process of wheezing rate, sleep apneas and snoring (ELENS-DSA Respiratory Sounds Analyser®)

• has proposed, together with Dr Emile Lens, an updating of the French speaking and Latin nomenclature of respiratory sounds

• has proposed a new physiotherapy approach of the peripheral lung pathologies, particularly pneumonia

• has proposed a new approach of the treatment of infant extrathoracic bronchial obstrcution using DRR + I

(for abbreviations see Techniques)

The indications of the techniques, posed from the specific physiotherapic assessment, concern obstructive et restrictive diseases, such as:

• infant bronchiolitis

• bronchitis

• wheezy bronchitis

• cystic fibrosis

• Kartagener syndrome

• rhinitis, sinusitis

• COPD (Chronic Obstrucive Pulmonary Disease)

• bronchiectasis

• asthma

• pneumonia

Teaching of this method is now part of official teaching programs of physiotherapy in belgian schools and universities, as in other European countries. It is also recognized by public authorities in several countries that accept and support its teaching.

The indication of the techniques relies on a specific physiotherapic assessment of bronchopulmonary obstruction described hereafter.

Over the last few years, alarmist messages related to abusive prescriptions of antibiotics, either in home or hospital medicine practise, were sent out regularly. It must be reminded that chest physiotherapy can represent an alternative to the use of some medications.

The jury of the "Conférence de Consensus Francophone sur la Bronchiolite du Nourrisson" has shown courage and intellectual and scientific honnesty by the relative positioning of the action of drug therapies with regard to chest physiotherapy. This one of the main reasons why we continue to plead for a "chest physiotherapy of first intent" in infant acute respiratory diseases.

 E-Mail:            postiaux.guy@chndrf.be

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