Biomechanical Performance and Relevant Mechanism of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for Neuromusculoskeletal Disorders

Book excerpt: Biomechanical performance is a key to evaluating effectiveness in physical medicine and rehabilitation for neuromusculoskeletal disorders. Assessments can be applied to degenerative dysfunction (e.g., falls or knee osteoarthritis in older adults) and sports-related injuries (e.g., ankle sprain or anterior cruciate ligament injury). Patients' body movements and daily activity functions can be compared to the state of pre-injury condition or to the level of healthy individuals. Some cutting-edge studies have gone a step further and used biomechanical performance to develop physical medicine and rehabilitation approaches and explore the mechanisms behind their effectiveness. However, such studies are still relatively rare. This research topic is intended to encourage more relevant projects to be published. This research topic aims to encourage researchers to use biomechanical performance to design advanced physical medicine and rehabilitation approaches, evaluate the effectiveness of the rehabilitation approaches, and explore the mechanisms by which rehabilitation approaches work for neuromusculoskeletal disorders. Some studies have developed stretching approaches for the rehabilitation of knee osteoarthritis in older adults by measuring biomechanical performance during functional activities. Some studies indicated that the mechanism of physical activity to reduce falls in older adults lies in its effectiveness in increasing proprioceptive sensitivity, and further indicated that rehabilitation of proprioception may be a key to reducing falls in the fall-prone older adult population. Some other studies analyzed biomechanical performance in ankle ligament injuries to understand when, how, and why ligaments fail. As a result, this research topic will expand the application of biomechanical performance to better understand and treat neuromusculoskeletal disorders.