I was very discouraged by your article Back To The Future (Evening Press, March 22) describing how back pain can be magically eliminated by the application of a piece of technological equipment to a patient lying on a couch.

There was I thinking that - after three years' undergraduate study followed by four years' postgraduate practice, training and research I was developing some insight into how a patient's posture, working positions, movement patterns, muscle balance and function might be causing their dysfunction, when all the time all I needed was to spend £6,000 on a piece of hardware.

I would like to correct the impression given by your correspondent, Eric Tingley, that physiotherapy cannot offer a long-term solution. On the contrary, unless the underlying contributory factors are correctly identified by a competent practitioner and addressed by the sufferer, they can confidently look forward to frequent and repeated courses of passive symptomatic alleviation.

Eric Rose BA, BSc, MCSP, SRP,

Physiotherapy Department,

Malton Hospital.

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