Quantifiable Soft Tissue Manipulation (QSTM™) – A novel modality to improve clinical manual therapy with objective metrics

Abstract

Soft Tissue Manipulation (STM), a form of mechanotherapy, offers a clinical modality to examine and treat Neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) pain disorders and dysfunction. The, current STM practice is mostly subjective and reliant on anecdotal patient feedback and lacks quantification with objective metrics. This paper proposes Quantifiable Soft Tissue Manipulation (QSTM™), a sensor based computerized technological advancement in Soft tissue examination and treatment enabling new standard of practice in manual therapy. This novel medical device technology aims to produce optimum STM prescriptions using ergonomic, portable, handheld medical tools with specially contoured tips designed to palpate and assess tissue anomalies of specific musculoskeletal conditions. QSTM™ captures three–dimensional forces and motion of the mechatronic handheld tools to quantify STM treatment parameters, such as (resultant force, force application angle, rate, direction, and treatment time). Clinical practice using QSTM™ facilitates real-time visual feedback of treatment metrics and subsequent treatment documentation for comparison and analysis on a Windows based computer software (Q-Ware©). Pre-clinical testing using the QSTM™ medical device system clearly identifies inconsistencies among practitioners and distinguishes STM practice variabilities. Thus, QSTM™ is an apt tool for soft tissue treatment assessment, analysis, and individualized prescriptions for targeted STM dosing and commercialization.