lable at ScienceDirect

Manual Therapy 16 (2011) e6

Contents lists avai

Manual Therapy

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/math

Book review

Mobilisation with Movement– The Art and the ScienceB. Vicenzino, W. Hing, D. Rivett, T. Hall

This new text is an overdue addition to the field of manualtherapy. The authors have brought together the available evidenceon Mobilisations with Movement, and have placed this within theresearch relating to manual therapy in general. They have alsoupdated the theories behind MWMs, and offered a range of clinicalcases to illustrate.

The authors are all well respected in the field and bring theirexpertise to bear in delivering this text. Experienced cliniciansalso contribute hugely to the text, with 12 case studies, whichexplore the use of MWM in practice, and the clinical reasoningbehind their use.

The book is divided into 4 sections. The sections relate to theapplication of MWMs, their efficacy, the mechanisms and effects,and a series of case studies. The introduction gives a brief histor-ical perspective of Brian Mulligan and his approach to manualtherapy. This sets the scene for the new approaches and evidenceused in the following chapters. Chapter 2 proposes a ClientSpecific Impairment Measure, or CSIM. This is equivalent to Mait-land’s comparable sign, and the authors suggest this is the key tosuccessful use of MWMs, Whilst it is clearly helpful to focus theclinician on the need to use patient related tasks or activities inplanning and assessing treatment, I am not sure that the addi-tional jargon involved in inventing a new measure is that helpful.It threatens to overcomplicate what is a very simple and effective,existing idea- perhaps in an attempt to raise the profile of thisapproach and distinguish it from others. I think this is unfortunate,as the techniques are simple and effective and do not need to becloaked in academic process and acronyms. The second half ofchapter 2 guides the reader through the different parameters asso-ciated with the application of the mobilisation aspect of theMWM. At times it seems a little prescriptive, but it does givethe reader a good starting point if they are unfamiliar with theapproach.

doi:10.1016/j.math.2011.06.005

The systematic review in Chapter 3 gives an excellent summaryof the available evidence and is a valuable resource for the reader.It gives an honest and realistic appraisal of the available evidence.

Chapters 4–7 (Section 3) cover the mechanisms and effects ofMWM. Whilst there is a lot of good information within these chap-ters, I found it a little challenging to tease out the relevant details.Once again I felt the authors and contributors overcomplicatedthe themes here, and it may have been more useful to amalgamatethese chapters in a more concise summary. Chapter 5 proposesa newmodel of the mechanisms of action of MWM, but of 70 refer-ences in this chapter, only 8 were within the last 5 years. The refer-ences through the rest of this section were more reflective of therecent literature.

Section 4 (Chapters 8–19) is the case study section, covering allregions of the body. The format of these case studies gives the readerinsight into the clinical reasoning of the clinician, alongside thepatient presentation. For me, some of these cases are somewhatcomplicated by generic evidence that is cited, where specificevidence relating to the case in questionwould havemade for easierreading. This clouds the clinical reasoning forme. Itmight have beenclearer to separate the theoretical evidence from the patient specificclinical evidence, but this may just be my personal preference.

Overall I would recommend this text for both undergraduateand post graduate therapists, and think it fills a significant gap inthe market. The reservations above are mostly related to mypersonal preference, and clearly may not apply to all readers.The authors are to be commended for the tremendous amount ofwork that has clearly gone in to producing this text.

Chris Mercer*Western Sussex Hospitals Trust, Physiotherapy, Lyndhurst Road,

Worthing, West Sussex BN11 2DH, UK

* Tel.: þ44 07808739478.E-mail address: christopher.mercer@wsht.nhs.uk

14 June 2011