A life devoted to listening to the lung.

Guy Postiaux is one of the most striking figures in contemporary physiotherapy. Born and trained in Belgium, he graduated in physiotherapy from the Institut Provincial de Kinésithérapie de Montignies-sur-Sambre in 1968, then obtained the teaching aptitude certificate of the State Central Jury in 1983. Very early on, his attention turned to a clinical skill often neglected by physiotherapists of his time: lung auscultation. What many saw as a tool reserved for doctors became, thanks to him, the central instrument of a new physiotherapy — guided by the ear, founded on science and deeply respectful of the patient's physiology.

For several decades, Guy Postiaux practised and conducted his research at the Centre Hospitalier Notre-Dame et Reine Fabiola (CHNDRF) in Montignies-sur-Sambre, in the Charleroi region. He was head of the functional testing and respiratory sound analysis laboratories and of the respiratory physiotherapy department. Within the Groupe d'Étude Pluridisciplinaire Stéthacoustique, which he co-founded, he and Dr Emile Lens developed a research programme unique in Europe, devoted to the objective measurement of respiratory sounds and the experimental validation of physiotherapy techniques. From this patient, often thankless and sometimes solitary work came the method that now bears his name.

His influence soon crossed Belgian borders. He was invited to teach at René Descartes University — Paris V (1986–1991), then at the École de Cadres en Kinésithérapie Bois-Larris in France. In Spain, he was a visiting professor at Ramon Llull University in Barcelona (1995–2001) and at the Universidad ONCE in Madrid. In Brazil, he became a visiting professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte and the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife. In Belgium, he taught at the Hautes Écoles Charleroi-Europe (1982–2003), the Haute École Léonard de Vinci, the Haute École Parnasse and the Haute École Condorcet, and was an Associate Lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) from 2004 to 2007.

His influence extends far beyond French-speaking physiotherapists. A full member of the Société Scientifique Belge de Kinésithérapie, an effective member of the Restricted Chamber of the INAMI medical control service, a founding member and secretary of the CHNDRF medical ethics committee, and founder and honorary member of the Société Européenne de Kinésithérapie Respiratoire et Cardio-Vasculaire, he has taken part in all the major bodies that structure the profession. He represented the Belgian Government to the Senate commission studying the professional status of physiotherapists in 1994, and sat on the National Technical Council for Physiotherapy.

Internationally, his scientific commitment is just as deep. He is a member of the International Lung Sounds Association (ILSA), the American Association for Respiratory Care, the Société Belge de Pneumologie and the European Respiratory Society Task Force on Lung Sounds Nomenclature Survey. A member of the CORSA Group — Computerized Recording and Analysis of Respiratory Sounds, he served as a research expert under the European Communities' Biomedical and Health Research Programme (BIOMED 1) from 1994 to 1999. This involvement makes him one of the major contributors to European recommendations on the nomenclature and standardised analysis of respiratory sounds.

His work was recognised early. In 1991, his book Kinésithérapie respiratoire et auscultation pulmonaire received the prestigious "Kiné à la Main d'Or" Trophy in Paris, on 12 October 1991. This book, followed by La kinésithérapie respiratoire de l'enfant (De Boeck Université, several editions, translated into Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese) and then the reference work Kinésithérapie et bruits respiratoires — nouveau paradigme (De Boeck Supérieur, 2016), now shapes the teaching of respiratory physiotherapy in most French-speaking schools and beyond.

Beyond these titles, what truly characterises Guy Postiaux's career is a constant refusal of "recipe-based" physiotherapy, scientific rigour applied to daily practice, and the deep conviction that every patient is a particular case, deserving a specific physiotherapy assessment and appropriate treatment. This philosophy — demanding, rigorous, deeply human — is precisely what Stéphane Otto now passes on to physiotherapists around the world.

The specific physiotherapy assessment of bronchopulmonary obstruction.

At the heart of the Postiaux method lies a conceptual innovation: the specific physiotherapy assessment. Where traditional respiratory physiotherapy was organised according to a nosological classification — based on the medical diagnosis (bronchiolitis, cystic fibrosis, COPD, etc.) — Guy Postiaux proposes a functional and anatomical approach. The physiotherapist no longer acts according to a diagnostic label, but according to what he or she observes and hears in the patient.

This assessment rests on three pillars: systematic lung auscultation, evaluation of ventilatory mechanics and analysis of the location of the obstruction according to a tiered concept of the bronchopulmonary tree. From this analysis, the therapist selects the appropriate technique — proximal, middle or peripheral — and adapts it case by case.

This deeply personalised approach explicitly rejects the logic of "recipes": there is no single protocol for all cases of bronchiolitis, nor a fixed sequence for all COPD. Every patient deserves an assessment, and every assessment determines the treatment. This clinical rigour is what makes the difference between technical physiotherapy and medical physiotherapy.

The specific physiotherapy assessment is now the main content of the courses taught by Stéphane Otto around the world. It is taught not as a protocol but as structured clinical reasoning that each physiotherapist learns to integrate into daily practice, in private practice as well as in hospital.