The Cranial Course

Section 1 – Why this course?

• How to use and navigate the course?
• Introduction to the speaker: Where do I stand?
• Why this cours? – Professional chalenges and current issues

Section 2 – Cranial sutures

• Features common to all cranial sutures
• Sutures at the base of the skull
• Sutures of the vault and the face
• Clinical implications and conclusion

Section 3 – Basic principles of the mechanics of materials

• Why shloud we care?
• How to test and describe the mechanical properties of a material?
• Additional concepts

Section 4 – Mechanical behaviour of living tissues

• Why bones bend but don’t break
• In-vivo bone strains in humans
• Practical application: the example of stress fracture
• Mechanical properties of the head
• The special case of cranial sutures
• Bons – Considerations regarding the pediatric skull

Section 5 – Manual approach to the head

• Palpation pressures: where do we stand?
• “Ask not what your hands can do for you; ask what you can do with your hands” 
• Reliability of cranial palpation
• An opportunity to awaken patients’ perceptions and let them take an active part in care
• the delicate question of touch

Section 6 – Clinical implications

• How to express what we do into layman’s terms
• Terms and concepts that may facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration

Section 7 – Historian’s corner

• Origins of the mechanical model initially proposed by William Garner Sutherland
• Other models of the manual approach to the head
• The historical model seen from 2025 perspective

Section 8 – Teacher’s corner

• Should we continue to teach the historical approach?
• Is a cranial model absolutely necessary to learn to manually assess and treat the head?
• Teaching tips & tricks

Section 9 – Synthesis and conclusion

• Main features and limitations of this model
• Potential future developments