Unsatisfying medical outcomes

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Dr. Stephen Typaldos, DO (March 25, 1957 – April 5, 2006) grappled with the phenomenon that traditional medical methods - such as the administration of painkillers, immobilizations, as well as osteopathic and chiropractic methods had such low success with certain soft tissue injuries like ankle sprains, acute neck pain, and also with chronic pain conditions.

He could not improve these unsatisfactory results through sophisticated diagnostic equipment (ultrasound, CT, MRI, NLG), nor through refined manipulation techniques.

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Patients are experts of their complaints

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Therefore, Dr. Typaldos began to question his patients and to his surprise, many had a very concrete idea about the nature of their complaints. In many cases, the patients unconsciously had the suitable solution approach, which they could express with very specific gestures and verbal descriptions.

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This language of pain was unknown in osteopathy and conventional medicine. Dr. Typaldos began to recognize patterns that occurred in a very typical way in his patients and derived the hypothesis that there are three-dimensional shape changes in the fascia, which are perceived and precisely communicated by the patient differently, and can be corrected through very specific maneuvers - with close feedback from the patient.

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Interpretation of Pain Gestures as a Key to Diagnosis

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The FDM diagnosis is based on three pillars and leads to an independent FDM diagnosis, which ultimately leads to a reevaluation of disease concepts in conventional medical diagnoses (keyword reversible).

The unique feature of this method is the so-called pain gesture or body language. This involves expressing complaints with the hands and body.

This gesture language is an expression of the patients' self-perception. It is non-verbal, unconscious, culturally independent, and the same worldwide. The trained eye of the therapist can immediately decrypt these very specific patterns and get direct hints about individual fascial distortions.

A comprehensive history (origin, mechanism of injury, typical pain description) and physical examination with patient-specific stress tests complement the FDM findings.

 

Ultimately, the patients' complaints are simultaneously the diagnosis in FDM. The precise perception of pain (the "where" and "how") as well as the feeling of functional limitations (such as weakness, instability) lead directly to the diagnosis.

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Currently, an FDM study is underway: "Pain Gestures – Behavioral Biological Study on the Classification of Gesture Language" with Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Oberzaucher, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Behavioral Biology, University of Vienna, the first results are promising.

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Patient Orientation in FDM

Inevitably, this patient-oriented diagnostic and therapeutic concept - patients are experts of their complaints and guides to success - leads to a reevaluation of the doctor-patient relationship.

 

Suddenly, it's not the scientific expertise of the doctor that's in focus, but the competence of the patient.

New Diagnoses Lead to New Therapies Dr. Stephen Typaldos' success proved him right. He recognized that the body's own perception of the patient - namely his precise proprioception and nociception - as the basis of the diagnostic process in FDM, is superior to any diagnosis from outside (whether manual or instrumental).

 

The Fascial Distortion Model by Dr. Stephen Typaldos, DO, is thus a completely independent medical perspective, in which the cause of all injuries, physical complaints, functional limitations, and other disease images is traced back to certain deformations in the fascia (so-called fascial distortions). With these six fascial distortions, the integrity of the fascia remains intact; it is only reversibly deformed (e.g., glued, twisted, pinched, or folded). Keyword reversible: "not broken, just stuck."

 

This new medical perspective in FDM leads to a reevaluation of conventional disease concepts and to new diagnoses and ultimately to new therapies.

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In FDM, there are no terms like osteoarthritis or disc prolapse – because these are notions from other medical models (e.g., orthopedic), which, in our view, are not responsible for the complaints.

It's only a matter of perspective; our therapeutic actions are determined by how we imagine the human body.

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