Andrew Hutton Physiotherapist

 

Background

Andrew Hutton is an APA Titled Sports Physiotherapist currently sharing his professional time between lecturing on the Integrated Dryneedling training programme  and clinical time at Integrated Physiotherapy serving Hobart, Kingston the surrounding Huon Valley and Channel areas.

He graduated from Sydney University in 1990 and in 1994 ,established Sports Point Physiotherapy in Ballina, NSW,  where he consulted until 2009 when he relocated to Tasmania with his family.

He has a wide range of interests and experience within the field of musculoskeletal physiotherapy having treated acute and overuse injuries in football players (all codes, primarilly rugby league and rugby union) for many many years.

Sports Physiotherapy

Andrew gained his APA Sports Physiotherapy Title just prior to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and  had extensive experience treating injuries associated with:

  • individual swimmers and swimming squads, and elite, age group tri-athletes. This has involved not only treating acute injuries but treatment and screening for injury prevention and performance enhancement
  • middle and long distance runners
  • road cyclists and mountain bikers
  • surfers,surf ski paddlers, dragonboat and outrigger canoe paddlers
  • golfers

Andrew uses a movement focus rather than a pain focus in his approach to treatment and retraining, working to identify and restore efficient movement patterns that have led to injury and training awareness and integratiion of new or restored movement patterns in order to prevent reoccurrence.

Andrew has been integrating traditional acupuncture and dry needling in a physiotherapy environment to treating sports injuries at all levels and, neck and back pain since the early 1990’s which has provided him with a great tool to stimulate tissue and physiological change. How long or how well changes are maintained depends on how well new movement or postural strategies are maintained, which is where the coaching and learning of efficient functional movements is important. Video and digital postural assessment are some of the tools used in this phase of treatment.

Dry needling

There has been growing interest in the Australian physiotherapy community  and in the general community in ‘dry needling’ (the use of needles in a western physiological paradigm). Physiotherapists have come to recognise the advantages skilful use of needling has in complementing manual techniques, not the least of these being a reduction in post treatment soreness experienced by the patient

Some of the effects of needling are:
•the stimulation of structural change in the collagen matrix
•alteration in the neural activity in the peripheral and central nervous systems
•local tissue changes such as improved circulation, inflammation regulation and stimulation of tissue repair

The specific approach to dry needling used  at Integrated Physiotherapy is Integrated Dryneedling, an approach developed and taught by Andrew to over 2000 of his peers around Australasia since 1996.

Clinical Educator

Andrew has used acupuncture and dry needling in his management of a mainstream sporting and musculoskeletal clients since 1994. He completed the APA acupuncture training programme in 1994 and lectured on the APA Acupuncture training programme between 1997-2009.

A passionate practitioner of skillful dry needling Andrew aims to offer manual therapists an approach to dry needling that addresses the many shortcomings of popular trigger point approaches at the same time accessing many effects of dry needling not available to practitioners of those approaches.

He developed the Integrated Dryneedling approach and the early versions of the course were presented in 1996. Over 2,300 practitioners and Australia and New Zealand have completed the Integrated Dryneedling training programme. Andrew has presented to colleagues at the Australian Institute of Sport, several APA National conferences and in many other professional forums, increasing awareness of the versatility of this approach to dry needling.

Further information about Andrew Hutton and Integrated Dryneedling can be found at the Integrated Dryneedling course website  www.dryneedling.com.au and at the Integrated Dry Needling Course Facebook Page