How To Manage an Acute Injury Before Surgery | Kelly Starrett, DPT
Whether you know for sure that you need surgery, or you just think you might need surgery, a lot of people wonder what they can do in the meantime to address their acute injury and accompanying symptoms. Dr. Kelly Starrett, DPT discusses how you can utilize a modality like H-Wave to help address pain and congestion caused by an acute injury before you need or have surgery.
We know that early mobilization and small range of motion after an injury is crucial but can be complicated by pain and or swelling and congestion around the area. That severe congestion can slow down the healing process, therefore causing a longer recovery.
“As long as tissues are under high pressure and diffusion as a normal reaction to the injury, and until you can get ahead of that swelling mechanism and evacuate that swelling out; you really can’t tell what the loss of function or range of motion is, and sometimes can’t even perceive what might be going on in the joint, even with special tests provided by your clinician” – Kelly states.
So how can H-Wave help?
The FIRST GOAL is to provide some immediate on-demand pain relief with H-Wave’s High Frequency. This provides momentary pause from the brain’s perception of pain that may be inhibiting movement or creating fear around movement. It also provides this relief in a drug-free way, without the need for prescription medications.
The SECOND GOAL is to decrease the congestion around the injured site using H-Wave’s Low Frequency. The low frequency creates small muscle contractions without causing pain, which helps flush out the waste that can start to build up. Similar to the metaphor about shoveling snow as it falls, this process can be most helpful when applied as soon as possible after an injury or strain so that the body doesn’t have an opportunity to create massive build-up and swelling that would be harder and take longer to flush out.
Watch the video to learn more on how H-Wave can be the gateway to more active and complete recovery:
**PLEASE NOTE – Determining whether or not surgery is needed after or because of an injury should always be a conversation with your physician.