Hirudotherapy in vertebroneurology

It is no accident that the first section of the chapter on professional hirudotherapy is devoted to vertebroneurology. This part of the book was written with the participation of the honored doctor of Russia, a doctor of the highest category, head of the department of vertebroneurology of the polyclinic No. 1 of the Medical Center of the Presidential Administration of Russia, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Bakalova. A doctor with 40 years of medical experience, Tatyana Alexandrovna has been working as a manual therapist for more than 20 years, using leeches she has been treating her patients for more than 12 years.

Vertebroneurology solves the problem of pain in the back and in the joints of a non-inflammatory and non-oncological nature. Arthritis, including chlamydial, gouty, rheumatoid and others, are "outside the office" of the doctor-vertebroneurologist. It treats back pain caused by functional and dystrophic

changes in the tissues of the musculoskeletal system: muscles, ligaments, discs, tendons, joints.

According to statistics, 85-100% of people at least once in their lives complained of pain in the back and in the joints. Scientists from different countries have found that diseases associated with back pain are detrimental to the country's economy. For example, in the study of pain in the lower back, conducted at the National Institute of Neurological Diseases in the United States in 1997, it was found that the cost of diagnosis, compensation for disability to working and disabled persons increased from $ 4.6 billion in 1994 to 11.4 billion in1997.Americans consider back pain to be one of the most expensive diseases. According to the World Health Organization, back pain is now the second most common after cardiovascular disease.

In Moscow, because of this problem, about 2 million people become disabled every year. Whatever medicines prescribed to them by the doctors, the pain most often remain. Hirudotherapy is an effective method of solving this problem, of course, in combination with the treatment that the manual therapist conducts.

The department of vertebroneurology of the polyclinic No. 1 has been using medical leech for treating patients for more than 12 years. As is known, in Russia the Ministry of Health of the ZSSR method of treatment with leeches is officially authorized in 1989.This was largely due to the initiative and fundamental scientific research of the enthusiast of his cause, the Russian scientist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Isolda Parfyrevna Bassova.

According to the polyclinic number 1, about 80% of the patients of the 13 adhered contingent suffer chronic back pain, 8-10% of patients are associated with involvement of the peripheral nervous system, and 10-12% complain of acute pain. Interestingly, of the thousands of patients attached, 963 are complaining of back pain to other specialists.

The causes of back pain are multifactorial: it is an abnormal version of the structure, microtrauma, inadequate posture when doing sports, professional or domestic work, trauma to the musculoskeletal system, chronic diseases of the internal organs, inflammation of the joints, age-related dystrophic disorders in the tissues, infringement of inflow and outflow of blood. Often the cause is birth trauma, misconduct of obstetricians during childbirth. For example, subluxation during the birth of the first cervical vertebra may lead to the formation of scoliosis in children with possible later mental or physical underdevelopment. The sooner the true causes of pain in the back or joints become known, the easier it is to eliminate them.

Of course, dorsalgia( this is the medical name for pain in the back) is affected by stress factors, inadequate nutrition, mental and emotional overload, reduced immunity, sedentary lifestyle, unfavorable ecology. For the last few years, the so-called "office sickness" is characteristic of young people who have stopped to rest properly and force their body to work through force. For example, after hours of sitting in the airplane, the business man soon re-enters the work and sits at the computer for a few more hours. How does his back react? Of course, it's negative.

Each person, depending on his individual characteristics, has his own rational, adequate motor stereotype, everyone should know what he is exactly with him. Correctly explain the permissible load will help the chiropractor. But the main thing - to explain it in time, before there are pains in the back and in the joints.

So, the most important in the treatment of patients is the correct diagnosis, search and finding the cause of the disease. Correctly to establish the cause allows accurate clinical and instrumental diagnostics. After it became clear that this subluxation, adhesions, vascular disturbances, tearing, pinching of roots or accumulation of fluid inside, it is possible to carry out this or that treatment. The diagnosis depends on the duration of hirudotherapy, sometimes its combination with pharmacotherapy, reflexology, physiotherapy, laser therapy, all kinds of massages or other medications. All this requires a multidisciplinary training of medical personnel.

The treatment program today mainly consists of hirudotherapy combined with manual therapy. Particularly helpful leech to the postoperative patient who underwent surgery on the spine and joints. It is necessary to consult with other specialists observing this patient, in order to avoid situations when he may be prescribed drugs that are highly undesirable to combine with leeches, such as aspirin. A few days before the hirudotherapy session, the doctor should cancel these preparations, of course, if possible.

Today, many suffer from allergies to medicines, especially often they are found in children, and most of these patients can be helped only by non-medicament means, primarily hirudotherapy and manual therapy.

In modern vertebroneurology, hirudotherapy is a recognized and respected method. But you can compromise everything in two ways: by declaring the method a panacea and allowing people without appropriate medical training to practice this practice. Can the manual therapist or the hirudotherapist harm? Maybe if he does not know what he is doing. Is it possible to cause harm with a medical leech? You can also, if you do not know all the subtleties: how, where, in what quantities and under what diseases do you need to put leeches.

Current practice shows that a medical leech is a method of choice when other remedies are exhausted. For example, for a child with weakened immunity, when it is difficult to choose a medicine that does not cause complications. Influencing the diseased organ, leeches restore tone, stabilize the work of the whole organism as a whole.

Hernias, any changes in the ligamentous apparatus, arthrosis and much more require precise diagnosis. The specialist must compare the biomechanical processes that occurred in the joints, individually solve the problem of how to conduct a course of hirudotherapy. Of course, one should not think that using leeches can be cured once and for all. There is a natural biological aging of the body, which can be braked, but can not be prevented completely. However, it is possible to help the body adapt to its biological aging.

Sometimes on the surface the doctor sees one diagnosis, but with more careful examination it turns out that the diagnosed process is a consequence of a number of functions. For example, to restore the mobility of the joint, you need to create a corresponding background around it, otherwise the result will be temporary or it will not be at all. The doctor should also locally determine the tissue pain and lack of mobility in the joints.

In the department of vertebroneurology, leeches are placed directly on rigid ligaments, on painful sites, on the projection of the intervertebral joint. The next day the manual therapist corrects the work of this localization and the mobility of the intervertebral joints of the affected level, as well as the above and lower motor segments of the spinal column. Leeches not only relieve pain, muscle spasms, but also soothing. It is proved that medical leeches at the time of bloodsucking form a wound channel up to 1.5 mm. Biologically active compounds of the secretion of the salivary

lez medical leech enter the patient's body throughout the bloodsucking period. They partially penetrate directly into the lymph and bloodstream, improve blood microcirculation, provide oxygen to the tissues.

The effectiveness of leech exposure on the patient's body, according to the observations of a physician-vertebroneurologist, consists of several properties:

antibacterial;

anticoagulant;

is anti-ischemic;

antihypotoxic;

thrombolytic;

is hypotensive;

immunostimulating;

is an anti-inflammatory;

is an analgesic;

is decongestant;

neuro-reflex;

regenerative and others.

Medical leeches also prevent complications after surgery on the spine. For example, after a disc herniation, undesirable consequences are possible: as a result of overload, the level falls higher "whether lower. Other complications may include venous congestion in the spine, recurrence of compression of neural structures, scarring and adhesion of the ligamentous-tendon process. The organism adapts itself to pathology and forms its new incorrect motor stereotypes. Therefore, it is necessary to start treating the patient from the top of the wash, "spinning" the medical history of the disease until it is determined.

In one session, patients are usually placed from 3 to 5 leeches. Total sessions are conducted from 4 to 6, with an interval of 5-7 days. Of course, the doctor-hirudotherapist takes into account the age of the patient, the accompanying internal pathology, the profession, the psychosomatic features, as well as the severity of clinical manifestations and the degree of dystrophic changes in the musculoskeletal system.

The doctor determines the pain points and places directly on them from three to five medical leeches. One or two such sessions - and the pain goes away, the adhesion process is resolved, the quality of blood and the general mental state are normalized, the patients feel much better. Leeches also make the ligaments more elastic, especially after the traumas suffered, as a result of which the volume of motion is completely restored in patients. The physician should correctly determine which function "fell out", help her recover and not allow the body to adapt improperly to the disorder.

The main contraindication for hirudotherapy is hemophilia. At pregnancy, even 30-week-old, sometimes it is necessary to spend sessions hirudotherapy, for example, when there are sharp pains and there is a restriction of mobility in the neck. If the patient has concomitant diseases, for example, chronic vascular cerebral insufficiency, vegetative-vascular dystonia, thyroid nodules, then the vertebro neurologist treats it only after clarifying all the diagnoses and consulting with other specialists.

Leeches and children are put. On the one hand, it is easier for the vertebroneurologist to work with them, because their tissues are more elastic, but on the other hand, it is rather difficult to keep them "under leeches".The doctor, as a rule, puts them from one to three leeches, because hirudotherapy is a loading method, every session is a kind of stress for the body.

The medical institutions where the hirudotherapy sessions are held have their own requirements approved by the Ministry of Health. Contact of the leech with the mucous membranes and skin of the patient should be minimal. The doctor must conduct a session in the

perch and cap. Destruction of leeches is performed immediately after the procedure: they are placed in glassware and covered with dry chlorine lime or other disinfectants and disposed of in two plastic bags after one hour. Use leeches repeatedly, "release" them into the toilet bowl or return after the sessions in natural water bodies is prohibited.

TA Bakalova says the following: "In the memory of the body, all the codes of the diseases we have transferred are preserved. Leech is bioenergetic, it is an energy information animal, it gives its life for the sake of human health and is able to "remember" the traces of those diseases that it cured. Do not "remind" your body of his yesterday's sick state. Leaving in the ponds after the sessions of leeches, in addition, we also pollute the environment, giving nature its minuses and diseases. "

To home, "amateur" hirudotherapy in the field of vertebroneurology Tatyana Aleksandrovna is negative, with the exception of some cases when the patient has already passed one or two sessions with a doctor and saw how the leeches are put, after which the doctor himself gave him a scheme of setting and recommended to come toReception after house sessions. It is important to teach the proper treatment of leeches, because violation of hygiene rules can also become a source of infection.

Doctors know that a medical leech sometimes provokes a number of unexpected reactions of a sick organism. The hirudotherapy session can become a stress that will push it in one direction or another. Which one? A detailed answer to this question requires long scientific and medical research, observations of the patient many years after hirudotherapy. Biologists and physicians have yet to solve this problem.

Practice shows that in some patients the allergic reaction is manifested after the second procedure of setting leeches, after five or six days. There is swelling, pain, itching in places where leeches are staged, and body temperature rises. The practitioner can not always explain this reaction to the leech.

In organism of a medical leech, on its skin and suckers there is a bacterium-symbiont. It synthesizes substances, including enzymes, for digestion and long-term storage of blood in the stomach. It is known that it exerts a bactericidal and bacteriostatic effect on a number of pathogenic microbes. In addition to the beneficial properties of the symbiont bacteria, scientists have discovered that it is pathogenic. The disease that causes this strain is rare, it usually develops in patients with weakened immunity.

There is an opinion according to which sensitization takes place in the initial setting of leeches, that is, antibodies are produced for the leech secret, and re-introduction of the leech secret into the body triggers the second stage of humoral and cellular immunity: contact allergic dermatitis and others when the antigen and antibody interact. Therefore, the variant of an allergic reaction after the second hirudotherapy session is not excluded. Most often it is characteristic for patients who are "loaded" with medicines, with weakened immunity.