The ankle is one of the most commonly injured joints in the body. After all, there are few people who haven’t had a minor ankle sprain in their lifetime. However, most ankle injuries aren’t serious enough to warrant surgery.
There are some cases where your ankle may need surgery. A severe fracture. Torn ankle ligaments. Severe joint damage from osteoarthritis. These are some of the issues that could require an ankle surgery. In fact, it’s reported that in 2012 there were 5,500 total ankle arthroplasties performed on end-stage ankle osteoarthritis patients.
Recovering from ankle surgery can be a long process, but this process can be aided by having physical therapy after ankle surgery.
Three ways physical therapy after ankle surgery can help your recovery process
Physical therapists are experts in the human musculoskeletal system, and they help people recover from many types of surgery. These specialists will listen to your recovery goals. Then, they’ll build you a recovery plan that’s personalized to your goals and needs.
Such a recovery plan will be designed to help:
- Reduce pain — Even minimally invasive surgeries can cause some damage to tissue around the operation site. Often, this damage can lead to post-operative pain. Physical therapists can use techniques like Astym® therapy to reduce your ankle pain. One study shows that this therapy method helped completely resolve the pain of a patient with Achilles tendinopathy in just 10 sessions.
- Increase function — Ankle function is another factor that can suffer after an ankle surgery. Scar tissue and pain are two issues that can affect your ankle function. Physical therapists can use a category of therapy called manual therapy to counter these issues. A study of manual therapy following long-term ankle immobilization reveals that four weeks of this technique helped boost ankle function by nearly 22 points.
- Improve range of motion (ROM) — How much you’re able to bend your ankle in various directions is its ROM. This flexibility is likely to be reduced by an ankle procedure. Bending the ankle up and down can be particularly hard to do after surgery. Medical researchers report that Astym therapy helped increase this area of ROM by 10 degrees in 11 therapy sessions.
Excel Sports & Physical Therapy offers top-notch physical therapy after ankle surgery
Curious about where you can find effective physical therapy after your ankle surgery? Our team at Excel Sports & Physical Therapy offers care that can help your recovery process. We can perform a comprehensive evaluation of your ankle to determine what issues your surgery has caused. Our physical therapists can then create a personalized therapy plan for you. This plan can help you get all the benefits above and help you avoid future ankle injuries.
Worried that being stuck at home means you can’t get physical therapy? No problem! Our team offers therapy services like virtual therapy and at-home care that are designed to be used from your home.
Contact our team today for more information about the post-surgical therapy services we offer or to schedule an initial appointment.
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