Atlas of Electrotherapy -I : Waveforms and Electrode Placements for Cervical, Thoracic and Lumbosacral Regions

Book excerpt: An Atlas and a Workbook Electrotherapy is a fundamental lecture in physiotherapy which captivates every student in their first experience. However this enthusiasm may not last long due to the lack of educational materials. Some important terms of electrotherapy need experimental experience or computer simulations to understand. Waveforms are the unique sign of therapeutic currents that can be only visible in the oscilloscope screen. It is not possible to understand terms like waveforms by only definitions. Also, anatomic drawings and cadaveric photo-atlas may not be sufficient to understand the multi layer structure of skeletal muscles which is very important for electrode displacement. This study was the first step in my studies to improve electrotherapy education. After this study I have developed electrotherapy patient simulators, simple circuits to generate therapeutic currents. I have also developed computer simulations for students to identify the relation between skin filter and therapeutic currents. But this study may be the heart of every other study with my book "Introduction to therapeutic currents" (only available in Turkish Language). In this study, students can find and benefit oscilloscope screenshots of common therapeutic currents. Where they can identify every parameter of electrotherapy devices to generate a therapeutic waveform. Also, students can find multilayer simplified drawings of human skeletal muscles to understand electrode displacements, an effective area of the therapeutic signal. At the end of the book, a workbook is provided for multilayer presentations. Also, axial slices are presented for the understanding of target tissue depth under each electrode. The study is divided into two parts; The first part is devoted to the reminding of muscle anatomy that the student may need in electrotherapy classes. In the second part, schematic representations are presented according to the muscle depths required for electrode placement. The visual material in the first chapter was used with the permission of Bartleby Bookstore ©, Stanford Medical Center Library © and NLM Visible Human Project ©. Drawings for electrode placement were made by author using Inkscape 2.0. With the wish to be useful to physiotherapy students...