Cryotherapy: Physiological Considerations and Applications to Physical Therapy

Contemporary cryogenics has been developing from the end of the 19th century since the liquefaction of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and also the industrial production and storage of liquid coolants, enabled the development of cryobiology and the use of extremely low temperatures in medicine. The term "cryotherapy" was first used in 1908 by A.W. Pusey to describe the treatment of skin lesions with very low temperatures [Zagrobelny et al. 1999; Jezierski 2006;]. Currently, cryotherapy refers to various treatments aimed at lowering the body surface temperature without tissue destruction, whereas in cryosurgery diseased tissues are destroyed through freezing. The world's first cryogenictemperature chamber was set up in Japan, in 1978. Thanks to Yamauchi and his team, cryotherapy began to be widely used in medicine [Zagrobelny 2003; Skrzek 2009].