postural drainage

Please will you help me know the effect of gravity and body positions on postural drainage. Is it better for patients to lie on the affected side or the contralateral side. Justification of the position will be very much appreciated.

Dear Eunyarko,

Well, as far as I understand postural drainage is a simple treatment technique to learn, but quite a demanding clinical practice.

I am sure my practicing colleagues will agree with me that to obtain optimum efficacy of PD treatment mere positioning the patient in the right direction will not suffice.

It involves a constellation of factors like proper auscultation, scrutiny of the chest x-ray, pathophysiology of the disease condition, the state of the patient so on and so so forth.

For a general outlook and for a quick refresher on postural drainage I have attached a note on PD. It does highlight about positioning as well, so I am sure it will be of help to you, Eunyarko.

Cheers,

Thomas

fellow colleagues, can any one help me go about measurig cordination. any questionnier, or test. thats a real challenge in my project

Dear Eunyarko,

actually, there's no clinical evidence on the effect of "pure" postural drainage. Some respiratory therapists, like Postiaux, have demonstrated that positioning the damaged lung, that is, the lung that you want to drain below, it will help clear the secretions.
Gravity doesn't have any effect on the muco-ciliar escalator, which is responsible of the lung clearance, and PD theory is that gravity will help remove the secretions. What Postiaux has demonstrated is that if you put the lung that you want to treat underneath, the weight of the internal organs, the mediastine and the upper lung will help improve the compliance of the infralateral lung and thus the removal of the secretions.
I hope this information has been helpful, you can find some more stuff on this site: | Page d'accueil

dear Thomas and Luciana,

Thomas, I agree with you and find the CF factsheet a good patient factsheet and a starter.
Luciana mentions Postiaux. Unfortunately all his publications are in French.
A lot of methods from France do come to Spain but never reach the rest of the world.

I do expect however that the Canadians will know about the method and maybe even use it and I hope you, Thomas, are bilingual and can tell me a little more about the method.

I have contacted professor Rik Gosselink, Respiratory Rehabilitation in Belgium who told me that....quote(translated)" it is a variation of forced expiration, whereby changes in lung volume and or expiration power are said to help change the speed of the expiratoire flow in the more peripheral airpassages fascilitating the sputum flow". As far as he knows, "this is the theory, it has not been scientifically researched and he doesn´t know of publications from other authors regarding this technique"....

I would love to know more, read more and preferably in English.

Hope te hear from somebody

Esther de Ru