Manual Therapy 16 (2011) e6
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Manual Therapy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/math
Book review
Mobilisation with Movement– The Art and the Science
B. Vicenzino, W. Hing, D. Rivett, T. Hall
This new text is an overdue addition to the field of manual
therapy. The authors have brought together the available evidence
on Mobilisations with Movement, and have placed this within the
research relating to manual therapy in general. They have also
updated the theories behind MWMs, and offered a range of clinical
cases to illustrate.
The authors are all well respected in the field and bring their
expertise to bear in delivering this text. Experienced clinicians
also contribute hugely to the text, with 12 case studies, which
explore the use of MWM in practice, and the clinical reasoning
behind their use.
The book is divided into 4 sections. The sections relate to the
application of MWMs, their efficacy, the mechanisms and effects,
and a series of case studies. The introduction gives a brief histor-
ical perspective of Brian Mulligan and his approach to manual
therapy. This sets the scene for the new approaches and evidence
used in the following chapters. Chapter 2 proposes a Client
Specific Impairment Measure, or CSIM. This is equivalent to Mait-
land’s comparable sign, and the authors suggest this is the key to
successful use of MWMs, Whilst it is clearly helpful to focus the
clinician on the need to use patient related tasks or activities in
planning and assessing treatment, I am not sure that the addi-
tional jargon involved in inventing a new measure is that helpful.
It threatens to overcomplicate what is a very simple and effective,
existing idea- perhaps in an attempt to raise the profile of this
approach and distinguish it from others. I think this is unfortunate,
as the techniques are simple and effective and do not need to be
cloaked in academic process and acronyms. The second half of
chapter 2 guides the reader through the different parameters asso-
ciated with the application of the mobilisation aspect of the
MWM. At times it seems a little prescriptive, but it does give
the reader a good starting point if they are unfamiliar with the
approach.
doi:10.1016/j.math.2011.06.005
The systematic review in Chapter 3 gives an excellent summary
of the available evidence and is a valuable resource for the reader.
It gives an honest and realistic appraisal of the available evidence.
Chapters 4–7 (Section 3) cover the mechanisms and effects of
MWM. Whilst there is a lot of good information within these chap-
ters, I found it a little challenging to tease out the relevant details.
Once again I felt the authors and contributors overcomplicated
the themes here, and it may have been more useful to amalgamate
these chapters in a more concise summary. Chapter 5 proposes
a new model of the mechanisms of action of MWM, but of 70 refer-
ences in this chapter, only 8 were within the last 5 years. The refer-
ences through the rest of this section were more reflective of the
recent literature.
Section 4 (Chapters 8–19) is the case study section, covering all
regions of the body. The format of these case studies gives the reader
insight into the clinical reasoning of the clinician, alongside the
patient presentation. For me, some of these cases are somewhat
complicated by generic evidence that is cited, where specific
evidence relating to the case in question would have made for easier
reading. This clouds the clinical reasoning for me. It might have been
clearer to separate the theoretical evidence from the patient specific
clinical evidence, but this may just be my personal preference.
Overall I would recommend this text for both undergraduate
and post graduate therapists, and think it fills a significant gap in
the market. The reservations above are mostly related to my
personal preference, and clearly may not apply to all readers.
The authors are to be commended for the tremendous amount of
work that has clearly gone in to producing this text.
Chris Mercer*
Western Sussex Hospitals Trust, Physiotherapy, Lyndhurst Road,
Worthing, West Sussex BN11 2DH, UK
* Tel.: þ44 07808739478.
E-mail address: christopher.mercer@wsht.nhs.uk
14 June 2011