Low back pain is the fifth most common reason for emergency department (ED) presentations in Australia.

Like most in the profession, Adrian Traeger APAM became a physiotherapist to help improve people’s health. He also had a keen interest in understanding when healthcare doesn’t help people—and how to stop that happening. For his research work, Adrian has been named this year’s Rising Star Award winner at the Australian Pain Society’s conference.

South Australian physiotherapist Leigh Rushworth was awarded a Physiotherapy Research Foundation Seeding Grant in 2021 to investigate the prevalence and management of breathlessness in intensive care patients. He talks to us here about the project.

Editor Mark Elkins provides a summary of the latest issue of the Journal.

Team leaders Professor Paulo Ferreira and Emma Ho, whose work was recently published in the British Medical Journal, discuss how their research can inform treatment decisions for practitioners and patients.

The Australian Pain Society’s 42nd Annual Scientific Meeting in Hobart in April celebrated the Global Year for Translating Pain Knowledge to Practice. InMotion catches up with some of the country’s leading speakers and presenters at the conference’s topical sessions, workshops and plenary and concurrent sessions.

Physiotherapists Ricardo Kenji Nawa and Aléxia Gabriela da Silva Vieira and colleagues in Brazil recently published a systematic review of trials of telerehabilitation for people with COVID-19 or post-COVID conditions (more commonly known as long COVID).

Lymphoedema occurs in about 16 per cent of people after breast cancer. According to the recommendations of the International Society of Lymphology (ISL), lymphoedema needs to be treated with decongestive lymphatic therapy (DLT), which consists of skin care, manual lymph drainage (MLD), compression therapy and exercise therapy. However, the value of MLD as a component in this regimen is uncertain. A Cochrane systematic review with six randomised trials did not demonstrate any added value from MLD.

Dr Angela Burge is one of 2021’s PRF Seeding Grant recipients, for a project investigating the cost-effectiveness of repeating pulmonary rehabilitation in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She speaks to us here about the project.

The use of hands-on manual therapy skills across the physiotherapy profession has been of interest to Darren Beales and the teaching and research team at Curtin University in Western Australia for some time. In particular, it is the questions of when to use manual therapy—and when to stop using it—that have piqued Darren’s interest. So when he was asked to speak at this year’s APA Tasmania Branch Symposium on this very subject, he jumped at the chance.