PT & OT, What's the difference?

What is physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy is also known as physical therapy. It's the core of rehabilitation treatment. It uses physical methods such as massage, heat treatment and exercise rather than drugs or surgery to help patients recover and improve functional impairment after illness or injury. It's widely used in neurological rehabilitation, musculoskeletal rehabilitation, postpartum rehabilitation, pediatric rehabilitation and other fields. Many people may think physical therapists simply manipulate joints, soft tissue and nerves through hands-on techniques. In fact, PT is not just Manual Therapy.

 

PT mainly includes the following three treatment methods:

Manual therapy

Physical therapists use their hands to treat diseases through specific techniques, such as joint mobilization, myofascial release, soft tissue mobilization, strain-counterstrain therapy, etc., to help patients recover function.

Physical agents modalities

It's a method to study and apply various natural or artificial physical agents on the human body to treat and prevent diseases. The common modalities include heat and electrode stimulation. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) that provides constant electrical stimulation is an electrical modality that controls pain.

Syrebo TENS therapy device enables users to lift wrists through electrical stimulation

Exercise therapy

It is mainly used to promote movement, relieve pain, and restore function through functional exercise. The types of exercise mainly include ROM training, muscle strengthening exercise, postural correction training, and neurophysiological therapy.

 

What is occupational therapy?

As an important part of rehabilitation, OT is to help people return to society and regain independence. It's usually used as an auxiliary treatment for conventional exercise therapy to improve patients' self-care ability.

OT primarily serves people with neurological injuries and musculoskeletal system diseases. As rehabilitation is a long-term process, OT may be slower to achieve results than PT; moreover, patients often only focus on recovering limb functions and ignore the significance of functional recovery. OT is often overlooked by patients.

 

In the OT room, you will see patients building blocks, writing, dressing and other activities of daily living. Occupational therapists design an intervention plan according to the patient's gender, age, interests, educational level, and degree of disability to reach the patient's goals. OT generally includes hand-function therapy, cognitive perceptual therapy, mirror therapy, etc., among which hand-function therapy is the most important.

Wooden pegboard training with Syrebo Hand Rehabilitation Robot

Eating exercise with Syrebo Hand Rehabilitation Robot

Pouring water with Syrebo Hand Rehabilitation Robot

Both PT and OT belong to non-drug rehabilitation treatment, and they are both involved in anatomy and neuropsychology. However, they are different in focus. PT focuses on improving people's ability to move. OT focuses on improving their ability to perform activities of daily living. Their treatment modalities also vary considerably. You can choose OT or PT depending on your goals and condition.