Have you recently suffered a musculoskeletal injury? Do you feel like you’ll never be back to normal? Don’t fret! Ohana Physical Therapy is here to help you navigate rehabilitation after an injury. From pain relief to injury prevention, we’re with you every step of the way.
When you suffer an injury, your body moves through four stages of recovery, which dictates how you should address the injury. The first few steps are simply about managing pain and reducing swelling and/or bleeding. Once you’re out of that acute phase, your body begins working to repair and rebuild the damaged tissue.
Physical therapy facilitates your body’s natural healing processes. We can help you manage pain in the early stages and show you how to effectively restore strength and function in the later stages. Perhaps most importantly, we can also show you how to stay strong and avoid future injuries.
If you want to learn more about physical therapy’s role in rehabilitation after an injury, call Ohana Physical Therapy to talk to one of our friendly staff!
What’s Involved in Rehabilitation After an Injury?
Physical therapy serves different roles at each of the various stages of recovery. Our physical therapists will work with you to provide the specific treatment approaches you need at a particular time.
Phase 1: Acute Care. At this stage, your body is simply trying to protect your injury from further damage. But to you, this generally manifests as pain, swelling, inflammation, and possibly bleeding.
In most cases, outpatient physical therapy isn’t involved with acute care. This is the treatment you receive from an emergency room or urgent care center.
Phase 2: Repair Phase: At this point, your body’s no longer in emergency mode, but you’re likely still experiencing pain and stiffness as your body starts working to repair its injury by creating new tissue.
Here’s where you might begin outpatient physical therapy. Our primary focus is on pain relief and early mobilization–the sooner you start moving the affected joint, the less likely you are to develop scar tissue that can cause pain and restriction later on.
Phase 3: Strengthening Phase: At this point (usually about six weeks after the injury), the healing and repair work has been completed, but the joint still lacks strength, mobility, and function.
At this point, we can begin rehab work in earnest. We’ll gradually build the intensity of your earlier exercises, focusing on strengthening the muscles surrounding the affected joint.
Phase 4: Continuous Rehabilitation: Fully rehabilitating after an injury takes a long time–anywhere from 3 months to a year. During this period, you’ll need to focus on further restoring strength and improving your joint’s overall function.
We’ll continue to progress you through your rehabilitation exercises. As part of that progression, we’ll incorporate functional training and work on strategies to avoid future injuries.
What Types of Injuries Can We Help Rehabilitate?
Physical therapists focus on your body’s musculoskeletal system, which means we can help rehabilitate most orthopedic injuries, particularly injuries to your soft tissue–your muscles, tendons, and ligaments. While physical therapy is often a frontline treatment for many common injuries, we also play an important role in rehabilitation after surgery.
Here are just a few of the injuries we can treat:
- Compression fractures (small cracks in your spine’s vertebrae)
- Ligament tears, including injuries such as ACL tears
- Herniated discs (occur when the cartilage between your vertebrae bulges or ruptures)
- Rotator cuff injuries (your rotator cuff is a group of muscles and tendons that supports your shoulder)
- Frozen shoulder (causes severe stiffness and pain in your shoulder)
- Sprains (damage to your joint’s ligaments)
- Strains (damage to your joint’s muscles and/or tendons)
- General joint pain, which often results from repetitive-use injuries
- And many more!
When you visit our CO clinic for the first time, we’ll conduct a thorough physical examination to help us identify your exact injury. We’ll review your health history, talk to you about symptoms, and walk you through simple movement screens testing your strength, range of motion, and more–all of which help us develop the right treatment plan for you.
What Techniques Do We Use in Rehabilitation After An Injury?
Our therapists will use several techniques and approaches to craft your customized treatment plan, including the following:
- Manual Therapy: We use these hands-on techniques from the beginning of your rehabilitation to help reduce pain, improve mobility, and promote blood circulation (which can help with healing). Examples include joint mobilizations (gently guiding a joint through its range of motion) and soft tissue manipulation (gentle manipulation of soft tissue).
- Modalities: We might also incorporate additional pain-relieving modalities if needed, such as TENs or hot and cold therapy.
- Mobility Work: Your early exercises will focus on improving your joint’s range of motion. We might start with passive stretches–in which we move the joint for you–before moving on to gentle stretches that you perform yourself.
- Strengthening Exercises: A progressive strength training program is crucial in rehabilitation after an injury. We’ll let you know which exercises will work best for you, and we’ll start simple and build the intensity as you improve.
- Functional Training: In the later stages of rehabilitation, we’ll work with you to restore function to your injured joint by “training” you in basic day-to-day movements, such as walking, balance, and specific activity-based movements.
- Injury Prevention Strategies: We’ll help you understand your injury and let you know how to avoid another.
Make An Appointment Today!
If you’ve injured yourself, a dedicated rehabilitation plan is crucial in ensuring you don’t suffer lasting pain and restricted mobility. Request an appointment with Ohana Physical Therapy today to learn more about our customized rehab plans and what we can do to help you!
