Condition library
Conditions
Evidence-based guides to conditions treated with physiotherapy and rehabilitation. Every guide names its author, the clinician who reviewed it, how strong the evidence is, and the sources behind each claim.
Category 1 · 12 guides
Neurological rehabilitation
Conditions of the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves and balance system. What rehabilitation changes here is function and participation — the underlying disease is managed medically, and these guides say so.
Brain and nervous system · 5
Stroke Rehabilitation
What rehabilitation involves, when it should start, and why the largest trial found that mobilising within 24 hours did not improve recovery.
Multiple Sclerosis
Exercise is safe — no increased relapse risk across 40 trials — and it reduces the symptom people rank as worst.
Bell's Palsy
Most people recover. The treatment with the strongest evidence is a drug started early, not an exercise.
Cervicogenic Headache
Headache that originates in the neck. Frequently mistaken for migraine, and the distinction changes the treatment entirely.
Dysphagia
The highest-value step is not a treatment. It is being screened before you are given anything to drink.
Dizziness and vertigo · 2
Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo
Brief spinning triggered by head position. The most treatable cause of vertigo, and the one most often mismanaged with medication.
Vestibular Neuritis
Strong evidence for rehabilitation — and why rest works against recovery.
Movement, balance and walking · 5
Parkinson's Disease
What physiotherapy improved, and the two outcomes it did not.
Spinal Cord Injury
Which walking-training method is best? The honest answer is that nobody has shown one.
Guillain-Barré Syndrome
Most people recover, but 20% cannot walk at six months. The rehabilitation evidence is 13 studies and 173 people.
Amputation and Prosthetic Rehabilitation
Exercise improves gait at every stage — and the evidence is thinnest for the group most likely to need it.
Falls Prevention in Older Adults
High-certainty evidence that exercise works — and equally firm evidence that it stops working when you stop.
Category 2 · 3 guides
Cardiopulmonary and lymphatic
Heart, lungs and the lymphatic system. Supervised exercise is the common thread, and these are the guides where the evidence for it is strongest.
Heart and lungs · 2
Cardiac Rehabilitation
Supervised exercise cuts cardiovascular deaths and admissions. What it does not change.
COPD and Pulmonary Rehabilitation
Cochrane closed the review because the question was settled. The open problem is access.
Lymphatic system · 1
Category 3 · 18 guides
Musculoskeletal and spine
Joints, muscles, tendons and the spine. The largest group in this library, and the one where the gap between what is commonly offered and what the evidence supports is widest.
Neck and back · 4
Low Back Pain
Why almost no case has an identifiable cause, why the scan usually misleads, and what guidelines recommend instead of rest.
Neck Pain
Why a bulging disc on the report means very little, and which exercises the trials actually support.
Sciatica
Why most cases settle without surgery, and what discectomy, injections and nerve-pain tablets actually achieve.
Cervical Radiculopathy
Nerve pain down the arm. Whether surgery helps depends on what is pressing on the nerve.
Shoulder and upper limb · 5
Shoulder Impingement
The operation named after the theory was tested against fake surgery. A diagnosis in retreat.
Frozen Shoulder
Why neither operation beat physiotherapy in the largest trial, and what the injection really adds.
Rotator Cuff Pain
The shoulder operation that was tested against a pretend operation, and did no better.
Tennis Elbow
The injection that works in six weeks and leaves you worse off at a year.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Surgery helps more people than a splint — by less than most people would notice. And the injection question is unanswered.
Hip, knee and lower limb · 5
Hip Osteoarthritis
Exercise matches anti-inflammatories for pain. In severe disease, replacement clearly wins.
Knee Osteoarthritis
Why the scan does not explain the pain, and which widely sold treatments the guidelines recommend against.
Meniscal Tear
Ten years on, keyhole surgery had produced no advantage over twelve weeks of exercise — including on the joint itself.
Patellofemoral Pain
Exercise and education work. The alignment story taught for decades did not survive being tested before onset.
Iliotibial Band Syndrome
A frequent running injury whose entire treatment literature covers 201 people. We say so rather than dress it up.
Foot and ankle · 4
Plantar Fasciitis
Loading the tissue beat stretching it — but only for the first three months.
Achilles Tendinopathy
Every active treatment beat doing nothing. None beat another. Start with the cheapest.
ACL Injury Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation first matched early surgery at five years. Half never needed the operation.
Ankle Sprain
Exercise cuts the odds of doing it again. The exercises usually prescribed do not resemble how ankles are actually re-injured.
Category 4 · 3 guides
Pelvic health
The pelvic floor, the abdominal wall, and the perinatal period. Common, under-reported, and among the most treatable problems covered here.
Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation
Eight times more likely to report cure than no treatment. Rarely discussed, highly treatable.
Antenatal and Postnatal Physiotherapy
Training the pelvic floor before a problem exists works. Started afterwards, the same training has much less behind it.
Diastasis Recti
Exercise narrows the gap by under half a centimetre. What it does change is function — and the pelvic floor evidence is strong.
Category 5 · 1 guides
Paediatrics
Children and young people. Early detection changes what is possible, and the most widely practised therapy for cerebral palsy is now recommended against.
Still being written
A guide appears here only after it has been written against primary sources and read by a named clinical reviewer. Conditions not yet listed are in preparation — see the editorial and review policy.
How to read these guides
Every guide published by the Physiotherapist India Team carries the same contract
Printed on the page, before the content, so it can be checked rather than taken on trust.