The job of the physical therapist is to assess form and to progress things in a safe way to make sure no further injury or re-injury occurs. Over time the workouts go from unloaded exercises like leg raises, to loaded exercises like squats to impact exercises like jumping. With hard work and guidance from a physical therapist strength grows and athletic ability can be regained. Workouts that previously would have felt easy will be quite difficult.
Strengthening and mobility begin in earnest and can be quite a lot of work. This is the time when the muscles are weakest from disuse and the freshly healed bone is fragile. Once there is enough healing to go back to basic activities such as walking without crutches then the real work begins. It’s not good to fall behind in the rehab schedule. It also means pushing into new boundaries as healing allows. At this stage the surgeon ensures that everything done in therapy is within the bounds of what the surgeon recommends based on the structural integrity of the Tibia. This is a time when staying in touch with the surgeon is important. Weight distribution onto the broken leg is performed in carefully selected stages, starting slowly and with light weight at first.Īs the strength of the bone and muscle builds, more activity is allowed. Initially physical therapy will include gentle strengthening and stretching.
The athlete will return to weight bearing activities after the bone has healed. However, a skilled PT would recommend starting gentle therapies before that to maximize outcomes and improve tolerance to harder therapies later on.
Traditionally physical therapy is brought into the equation a little later in the healing process, after the bone has healed enough to begin putting weight on it. WEIGHT BEARING PERIOD OF PHYSICAL THEARPY BEGINS These procedures are performed with great skill, and applying these skills in the right way can significantly decrease the time it takes to return to normal activity once the bone is healed. Management of swelling and circulation, gentle working out of the other leg and upper body, maintenance of range of motion of the toes, ankle, knee and hip, are all important to the recovery process. This is where having a great physical therapist with an extensive skillset, like ours at Rose Physical Therapy Group, is essential. Depending on the severity of the break and the complexity of the surgery that time could be even longer. This initial healing period is extremely difficult because not putting weight on the bone causes atrophy of the surrounding muscles.ĭuring the period of non-weight bearing recovery, rehabilitative procedures can be done to encourage healing. This contributes to the prolonged healing time and requires a period of about 6 weeks where no weight is put on that leg. Any time a bone is broken we have to remove pressure on that bone to allow it to heal. Just like a load-bearing wall in a house, the tibia is integral to our physical structure and without it we can’t stand up. The biggest factor is that the tibia is a weight bearing bone. NON WEIGHT BEARING PERIOD OF PHYSICAL THERAPY The severity of the break can vary, but there are some standard things that anyone who breaks these bones will go through. The footage of the Washington Redskins quarterback, Alex Smith, breaking both of these bones is hard to watch.Īnyone sustaining a double break like this would go directly to surgery. It takes quite a bit of trauma to break both of them at the same time. It’s unusual to break both bones, even in contact sports like football. The tibia and fibula are the two bones of the lower leg.
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