Like many other schools of orthodox medicine manual therapy is quite efficient in many cases, but still it is concentrated on the fight against symptoms, manifestations of a disease, instead of searching of initial cause of a disease. That’s why healing effect from manual therapy is temporary and has a high percentage of relapse, especially in case of chronic diseases.

It is important that a certain extent of risk and chance of traumatism are primordially possible. Rigidity, painfulness and safety of methods of manual therapy for a patient fully depend on individual approach of a doctor, on level and quality of his grounding and professionalism, his experience and personal responsibility. Actions of a negligent doctor or dilettante can cause complications after the treatment, sometimes very serious ones. Often pain shows itself some time later after the session of manual therapy: this is the way body reacts on abrupt interference.

Manual therapy is not self-sufficient; to diagnose it needs additional means of examinations: X-ray photographs, tomography, MRI, etc (not safe for patient’s health); to ease the pain, to remove inflammation additional medicamental treatment is needed. To achieve a higher level of effectiveness and safety it is recommended to combine manual therapy with massage.

Significant number of contraindications and restrictions (including age) take place in manual therapy: it is not allowed to use manual therapy for pregnant women, children until they reach the age of juvenile and people of advanced age. Unfortunately, those restrictions are not always followed.

Massage is an art, roots of which stretching back into antiquity. There are many kinds of massage exist, including healing one. Methods of massage are pleasant, helpful and quite effective. Act of massage is aimed at health improvement of the whole body: bone structures, joints, internal organs, musculoligament system, circulatory and lymphatic systems, central and peripheral nervous systems and so on. The conception of a human body as a single whole system is the basis of many kinds of massage. Some Eastern techniques of massage, for example, acupressure, shiatsu, meridian massage, etc., work with internal energy structures and stir up inner resources of the self-healing of the body.

Of course, use and effectiveness of massage shouldn’t be underestimated but somewhat perfunctory approach and absence of precisely developed system of full-fledged and accurate diagnostics often doesn’t allow it to achieve stable healing results. That is probably the reason of using massage not as an independent and self-sufficient method of treatment but rather as an additional one in a complex of other healing methods. Everyone who wishes can become proficient in most kinds of massage. Exceptions are only some kinds of massage where medical education is compulsory (e.g. therapeutic child massage). In spite of gentleness of influence and sparing approach, massage as well as other manual methods of treatment has its own limitations (pregnancy in particular) and contraindications.

Comparing all above mentioned methods and osteopathy, we can come to the conclusion that bonesetting, chiropractic, manual therapy are highly traumatic (i.e. potentially unsafe), symptomatic, painful methods, not always contributing to achieving of stable healing result; and massage is a gentle method but still it is far from being identical to osteopathy possibilities such as level of safety and effectiveness.