On the Treatment of Congenital Torticollis…
My 19 month old child has congenital torticollis. We have been performing traditional physical therapy for 3 months with little results. How does PRI treat congenital torticollis?
Torticollis revolves around muscle that is imbalanced, hyper and hypoactive and in the wrong position. The goal is to get the nervous system to recognize these muscular patterns of overuse or under use and cervical and thoracic osseous position and guide it in opposite directions and patterns.
I believe the neck is just part of the problem in most of these children. How they suck, breathe, swallow and rotate their trunks can have a greater influence on the reasoning behind their little twisted necks. Sidebending and rotation limitations usually involve muscles that attach to the occiput, sternum, upper cervical vertebrae, ribs and scapula. To reduce this hyperactivity of muscles that your baby is using in compensating for muscles that can’t work correctly (i.e. the diaphragm, the infra and supra hyoid muscle, the left abdominals, in your baby’s case the rib retractors and scapula protractors) proper apposition is needed for the muscles she can’t use and good thoracic position is needed to reduce cervical orientation. This requires specific normal human mechanics of this pattern (which is very common in humans with torticollis) and specific integrated activity to de-activate the neck and activate the chest wall. What position to feed, communicate, orient and guide in sit to stand to walk etc…to reverse the thoracic influences on the neck all will help to decrease this neuro-positional issue.
You will need guidance as parents over the next 5 to 7 years on what to do with your child and how to guide developmental tasks to avoid curvature of the spine. At this point (19 months) her left center of gravity and right thoracic rotation needs to improve, we could help you with this!
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