EDS / Hypermobility Syndrome / Similar

I am keen to make contact with therapists (from any manual therapy discipline) who have spent any time working with clients / patients with hypermobility syndrome, ehlers-danlos syndrome (EDS) or any similar conditions effecting joint stability and mobility.

I have a client that I am hoping to work with over a period of time, providing a combination of soft tissue treatment and exercise therapy. I would really appreciate the opportunity to speak to anyone who had any experience that they could share on what treatment techniques worked / didn't work?

Anyone?

Hi Sam

I have been working with an EDS patient for about a year concentrating on soft tissue work, corrective exercise and Pilates. It is a very complicated condition, which varies from person to person, so I would recommend finding out what type of EDS your client has and how it affects their everyday life as well as what causes them pain. To be honest, patients with the most severe forms will be in constant pain. Due to their condition, dislocation of joints is also common, so care must be taken for example when performing overhead movements and to not overload the joint, for example squats etc.

I have found that communication with the patient is the best source of working our what works and what doesn’t, as well as a bit of further reading and a thorough biomechanical assessment of your patient. You may notice high tone in some areas and weakness in others (particularly the postural muscles).

With regards to exercise therapy, I started with basic core stability and then moved onto scapular stability and postural work (my patient has very poor posture and body awareness) and now we are focusing more on the lower extremity (particularly ankle stability). Your patient is unlikely to be able to do lots of repetitions so start off with static and then move onto dynamic with low reps (say 5-6) and have plenty of rest in between. Keep everything low impact especially at the start.

Try to vary the positions that you have your client in as sitting, standing and/or lying for too long in one position will cause pain. Balance may also be an issue as is special awareness, so basic exercises that you can do here will also help.

Sometimes my patient is in too much pain to do any exercise, even gentle ones and we focus on soft tissue therapy to try to release and stretch the areas of high tone. Soft tissue release and gentle massage seem to work better and are much less painful than more invasive techniques such as trigger point therapy or METs.

Hope this helps a bit.

Ails

Dear Alis,

Thank you very much for taking the time to repond. Do you mind if I contact you directly with some more questions perhaps?

Best,
Sam

Hi Sam
Drop me an email- [email protected]