After approval of the National Curriculum Guidelines for Physiotherapy courses (DCN/FISIO), there was a significant increase of the number of graduation courses in physiotherapy, particularly in private institutions. The Northern Region had the highest growth rate of these courses in Brazil, between 1999 and 2004. Until 2002, the year of the DCN/FISIO approval, there were only six courses in this region. Currently, there are 27 courses of physiotherapy, four of them (15%) are held by public institutions and 23 (85%) by private institutions. Linked to this increase in the number of courses, the graduation profile defined in the DCN/FISIO changed the paradigm of the professional formation of a physiotherapist, originally based on the formation of a specialist in physiotherapeutic techniques for treatment and/or rehabilitation. Since the DCN/FISIO, the formation of a person with technical and scientific competence, a generalist and humanist, with critical and reflective capacity, ready to act in the health-illness process following ethical principles is sought. According to the DCN/FISIO, the courses that started in 2002 had two years after their approval to apply the new guidelines. This context of change and expansion of the offer of physiotherapeutic education justifies the present research, which takes as its object of study the Pedagogical Projects of Course (PPC) of the physiotherapy courses, its general purpose being to analyze the adherence of the physiotherapy courses from the Northern Region to the DCN/FISIO. To this purpose, we performed a critical analysis of the PPC, based on the methodology used by the Anísio Teixeira National Institute of Studies and Educational Research (INEP) in 2006, in this study of the adherence to the Curriculum Guidelines of other courses in the health area, such as Nursing, Medicine and Dentistry. We also visited the institutions that had the highest and lowest adherence to the DCN/FISIO and interviewed the coordinators of the Physiotherapy courses, with the aim of discovering the implantation of the elements highlighted as important and the strategies that are being used by these courses to overcome the fragilities. Among the findings in this study we can point out, as the best points of the courses in the Northern Region, aspects such as: the collective construction of the Pedagogical Projects, the interdisciplinary construction of the curricular matrix and/or the use of methodologies that propitiate this practice as well as the integration between theory and practice, the presence of mechanisms to control end of course monographs, the more breadth professional actuation areas during period training, the incentive for scientific production and the balance between the teaching schedule of essential contents and the presence of complementary activities regulation. On the other hand, we point out as fragilities: the indication that the Pedagogical Project was constructed in restricted groups, the literal transcription of elements of the DCN/FISIO in the Pedagogical Project, the use of teaching methodologies that do not match the educational perspective of the DCN/FISIO, the lack of interdisciplinarity, as well as integration between theory and practice, and elements that show the organization and monitoring of end of course monographs, the emphasis on technical learning rather than human learning and the little breadth professional actuation areas during period training, beyond the identified inconsistencies between the text of the Pedagogical Project and the reality of the visited courses.