Antonio Stecco MD

Antonio Stecco is an active athlete with recurrent minor traumas. He has the luck to have a father who performed a particular manual therapy focused in the fascia. The success of the results had stimulated Antonio, at the end of Medical Doctor's degree, to continuing the study in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and then, in a fellow, in ultrasonography for musculoskeletal dysfunctions and, in a PhD, in Sport Medicine. With the collaboration of his Sister, who is Professor of Anatomy at the University of Padova, he performed different anatomical and histological studies to prove the real anatomy and physiology of the fascial tissue. Those studies confirmed the anisotropic characteristics and non-linear elastic behavior of the deep fascia that is composed by different layers of parallel collagen fibers. This constitutive modeling represents a useful tool to rationally interpret the correlation between functional behavior and structural conformation of the deep fascia. The two are also studying the superficial and visceral fascia in this prospective.
His major contribution was the description of the increase of the fascial stiffness due to the modification of the viscosity of the hyaluronic that is presented between the different layers of collagen fibers that compose the deep fascia. This increase of the viscosity, that alter the dynamic response of the mechanoreceptors presented in the fascia, is considered one of the mechanism of the myofascial pain syndrome. Antonio Stecco is now the President of a non-profit association who is teaching this method, invented by his father, in more than 40 countries at more than 1000 students a year.