Manuelle Medizin in der Rehabilitation – ein Plädoyer

Rehabilitation involves improving function in order to restore the greatest possible level of personal activity and participation in all areas of life during aftercare following serious illnesses, injuries, and operations; it also includes the care of people with physical disabilities or chronic illness. The medical rehabilitation services defined in Book IX of the German Social Code (SGB IX) only list manual therapy indirectly, among the methods of physical therapy. In the area of statutory accident insurance, manual therapy training for therapists is required for both Erweiterte Ambulante Physiotherapie (EAP; expanded outpatient physiotherapy) and Berufsgenossenschaftliche Stationäre Weiterbehandlung (BGSW; continued inpatient physical and occupational therapy), but manual therapy is not listed in the rehabilitation treatment standards of the Deutschen Rentenversicherung. This is astonishing, as the goal of improving function is known to reflect a domain of manual therapy and medicine. This makes it clear that manual medicine techniques are useful in the rehabilitation process. Ultimately, the restoration of function in rehabilitation will be neither effective nor successful without the use of manual medicine principles and techniques.