Magic hands

A local physical therapy office in Bloomington is performing procedures with some unexplainable results. It's not voodoo, and it's not magic -- it's just somewhat of a mystery.\nBack in the mid 1980s, Karlene Huntley, director of clinical services at Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy Center, stumbled upon an unconventional and strange-sounding way to release soft tissue pressure in patients who have restrictive motion in injured body parts. \n"An accident of effort, I guess you would call it," Huntley said.\nHuntley was working with a patient who had suffered an accident that left his hand burnt and his fingers so twisted they could not bend into a fist. Huntley said she knew it would be painful to forcibly bend the patient's fingers, so in an effort to reduce pain, Huntley began to massage the ligaments around the injury. Throughout the process, an audible popping sound was heard. Huntley attributed the popping noise to her own fingers making a circular motion similar to the letter "C". After a few rounds of the "snap" technique, as it is called in the office, the patient began to see faster healing results.\nWith positive results from the new technique, Huntley began to look more into the combination of the audible snapping sound and the quick healing results that came from the massage technique. Though Huntley and colleagues still cannot specifically pinpoint the cause of the snapping sound, she can say the technique releases superficial scar tissue from surgery or injury sites and subcutaneous tissues, including the fascia, muscle, ligament, tendon, peripheral nerve and blood vessels. \n"What you look for is you try to find an area ... that feels restrictive," said Clinical Director Amy Van Sach. "Once you find that spot that feels restricted, you try to get your fingers perpendicular to the restriction and then use your fingers to put a little tension on the restriction to pull it. When that pull happens and you release the restriction, there usually is an audible sound, and that sound is a snap -- hence the nickname. The patient should feel better movement and less pain."\nVan Sach said the worst side effect from the procedure is slight bruising, which is rare. \nThe technique is typically used when traditional forms of treatment have not proven successful in taking care of the problem. \nThe success of the treatment soon grew after Huntley's initial discovery, and she decided to apply for a service mark for the technique. \n"I had to write a paper on why it was therapeutic," Huntley said. "(The service mark) is sort of to make it yours, something you have developed. You can market it as yours. Eight or nine people have now learned it from me."\nWord continues to spread about the technique. After numerous different treatment, many patients have come from far and wide to receive the advanced treatment. Van Sach said the technique is not widely successful with other professionals because it is difficult to learn the exact way to perform it. Since the treatment given by Huntley and others at the Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy Center is so exclusive, patients have come from as far as London to receive the magical healing. But for IU students and athletes, the treatment is in their own backyard. \nSenior Diane Soares, who has suffered from scoliosis for years, said she experiences back pain and sometimes fatigue from the curvature in her spine. Soares, who had not been to another doctor to be treated, said the pain from the scoliosis has begun to diminish because of the snapping technique provided by Van Sach and Huntley.\n"I have no pain anymore," Soares said. "It's wonderful."\n-- Contact staff writer Katie Schoenbaechler at kmschoen@indiana.edu.