[Use of discursive indicators to optimize the effects of physiotherapy in patients with lumbago]

In physiotherapy, a new approach using epistemological devices related to the therapists language has been experimented during therapeutic consultations. Would this approach lead to an improvement of therapeutic results? Regarding this question, we have compared the therapeutic results obtained in two different groups of twenty patients suffering from lumbago. In one group, traditional methods have been used, while the patients in the other group take benefit from the use of "epistemological indicators", in order to explain our knowledge of this pathology. The results suggest that the pain felt by the patients and their body dysfunctions could partly be due to their lack of knowledge and understanding of as well as to their lack of action on, their pathology. In order to make use of a new or more applicable kind of knowledge, it seems necessary for the patients to give up some of their usual mental representations of the pathology.