Suppose you are playing football with your friends. You run hard to go for a tackle. Both you and your opponent stay down for a while because of the impact. Finally, you get up and start playing again. There’s a niggle on one of your feet after the tackle, but you ignore it.
Later after the match, you see that that foot is swelling fast, and the pain becomes unbearable. The doctor tells you that you sprained your foot while playing. This is a classic example of a soft tissue injury.
A soft tissue injury can take place in your ligaments, tendons, and muscles. The injury results in swelling, pain, muscle damage, and bruises that take some time to recover. But you don’t need to panic because there are different ways to treat this type of pain and swelling.
In fact, you should get in touch with a professional who knows how to treat it. And there’s no better clinic to treat your soft tissue injury in Atlanta than Hurt 911 Injury Centers.
At Hurt 911 Injury Centers, we start by scanning the injured area to determine the best course of treatment. Different injuries require different types of treatment, such as chiropractic adjustments and corrective care, massage therapy, stretching and strengthening exercise regimens, ultrasound therapy, rehabilitative therapy, and electrical muscle stimulation therapy.
Over the years, our Atlanta physiotherapists and chiropractors have treated both athletes and non-athletes with soft tissue injuries. If you are suffering from sprains, stress injuries, contusions or bruises, strains, bursitis, or tendonitis, you should call us at 855-475-2588 right away. We can help you recover quickly through our different treatment methods.
What Are Some Different Causes of Soft Tissue Injuries?
Soft tissue injuries have two categories:
Acute injuries
Acute injuries occur due to a sudden trauma like twisting your leg or injuring your leg if you fall accidentally. A few common examples of acute soft tissue injuries are strains, sprains, and contusions.
Overuse injuries
Overuse injuries take place over a period of time. For example, when an athlete is so busy staying fit that his body doesn’t get time to heal from one workout session to another. Bursitis and tendonitis are two common examples of overuse soft tissue injuries.
What Are Some Common Acute Soft-Tissue Injuries?
As already mentioned, the common acute soft-tissue injuries are strains, sprains, and bruises:
Sprains
A sprain means stretching or tearing a ligament. Ligaments are strong bands of connective tissues responsible for connecting one of a bone to the other. They support and stabilize your body’s joints. For example, the ligaments in your knee connect your shinbone or tibia to your thighbone, thus enabling you to walk.
Some of the vulnerable areas that can sprain are the knees, wrists, and ankles. Doctors classify sprain pain into three categories:
- Mild or Grade 1 sprain: A mild sprain does little damage to your ligament fibers. It stretches your ligament without damaging it completely.
- Moderate or Grade 2 sprain: This involves partial tearing of one or multiple ligaments. You will notice abnormal looseness near the joint of the injured area.
- Severe or Grade 3 sprain: This is more common in athletes where they completely tear their ligaments. It causes significant instability. You may not be able to move the injured area until the ligaments get back to their proper places.
Swelling, bruising, inflammation, and pain are common in the three categories of sprains. Therefore, we usually follow the RICE protocol and also provide physical and massage therapy to treat sprains. RICE protocol means Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.
Strains
A strain means injuring your tendon or muscle. Tendons help in attaching muscles to your bones. These fibrous cords of tissues ensure proper mobility. Strains usually occur in your leg or back. You may see players complaining about pulling a hamstring or tearing a hamstring. It is an example of straining your leg.
A strain is similar to a sprain in the sense that a simple stretch may result in a partial tear of your muscle or tendon. Some of the common symptoms of strains are muscle spasm, swelling, inflammation, muscle weakness, cramping, and pain.
Hockey, football, wrestling, boxing, and any other contact sport athletes are at risk of straining their muscles, especially the hamstring. On the other hand, those involved in tennis, gymnastics, golf, or rowing have a high risk of hand sprains.
Stretching and strengthening exercise regimens and massage therapy, along with the RICE protocol, can treat strains successfully. Simple exercises focusing on the injured area can restore mobility and reduce pain. However, severe tears may require surgery.
Bruises
Also known as a contusion, bruises occur when you take a direct blow from a blunt object in your body. It crushes the connective tissues and underlying muscle fibers without breaking your skin. A contusion or bruise may result from jamming your body against any hard surface or falling accidentally.
The most common symptom of a bruise is blood pooling around the injured area, resulting in discoloration of the skin. For example, if a heavy dumbbell accidentally falls on your hand, you may not notice anything immediately.
The skin discoloration starts after a few hours. It becomes bluish-black and has tremendous pain and swelling.
What Are Some Common Overuse Soft-Tissue Injuries?
Now that you know about the acute injuries, let’s take a look at the overuse injuries and why they happen.
Tendonitis
Tendonitis means irritation or inflammation of your tendon. Sometimes you injure the tendon’s covering, called a sheath. This doesn’t occur due to a sudden injury or accidental fall; instead, it takes place because of a series of small stresses that slowly but steadily aggravate your tendon.
The common symptoms of tendonitis are pain and swelling that worsen every passing day.
Professional swimmers, baseball players, golfers, and tennis players are susceptible to this injury in their elbows and shoulders. On the other hand, runners, football and basketball players, and aerobic dancers are vulnerable to tendonitis in their ankles and knees.
At Hurt 911 Injury Centers, we treat tendonitis either by chiropractic adjustments and corrective care, electrical muscle stimulation therapy, or ultrasound therapy, depending on the severity of the injury.
Bursitis
Your body has small, jelly-like sacs in your elbow, shoulder, knee, heel, and hip. These sacs are known as bursae. Bursae contain small amounts of fluid between your soft tissues and bones. They cushion your joints from friction and prevent injuries.
Bursitis means inflammation of the bursa. Overuse and repeated small stresses may cause your bursa to swell. Many athletes may experience both tendonitis and bursitis at the same time. Many doctors recommend taking anti-inflammatory medication to relieve bursitis.
Here at our injury centers, we provide physical therapy, massage therapy, stretching and strengthening exercise regimens, chiropractic adjustments, and corrective care to treat bursitis. Surgery isn’t usually necessary to treat this injury.
Doctors may suggest removing the bursa from the injured area, but that happens only if none of the treatment methods work.
What Are Some of the Chiropractic & Physiotherapy Treatments We Offer?
Hurt 911 Injury Centers is one of the leading clinics in Atlanta to provide chiropractic and physiotherapy treatments for soft tissue injuries. If you notice any of the symptoms mentioned above, you shouldn’t delay contacting us. The more you wait, the more it takes to recover.
Here are some of the treatment methods that we follow:
Chiropractic Adjustments and Corrective Care
Chiropractic adjustments and corrective care involve spinal manipulation. We apply a sudden pressure in a precise manner to the pain-affected area that addresses your immediate pain and makes long-term corrections. We also perform extremity manipulation, a technique that involves making quick but forceful thrusts to manipulate your joints.
Massage Therapy
Massaging the injured area often heals the injury, relieves you from the pain, and helps you recover quickly. This type of massage is different from the body massage that you get in a spa. Massage therapy for soft tissue injuries involves special techniques to bend or apply force to the injured area to correct the problem and make the pain disappear.
Stretching and Strengthening Exercise Regimens
As the name suggests, we show you different stretching and strengthening exercises to recover from your injury. This part usually comes during the first few days of recovery. The exercise regimens help the injured area recover and strengthen it over time.
Rehabilitative Therapy in Our Rehab Room
Rehabilitative therapy involves a controlled, medical environment that helps your body regain strength, heal injuries faster, and make your body mobile like before.
Ultrasound Therapy
Ultrasound therapy is one of the most popular treatment methods for soft tissue injuries. We use sound waves that penetrate through the injured soft tissues to promote tissue healing.
Electrical Muscle Stimulation Therapy
Electrical muscle stimulation therapy is similar to ultrasound therapy. In this method, we send mild electrical pulses to your injured muscles, thus forcing them to recover quickly.
If You Have a Soft Tissue Injury in Atlanta, Contact Our Offices Today
With so many treatment methods available, we can assure you that you no longer need to worry about your soft tissue injury. Call the Hurt 911 Injury Centers at 855-475-2588 and set up an appointment. One of our doctors will talk to you, perform necessary scans, and start appropriate treatment as soon as possible.
We will guide you at every step of your soft tissue injury in Atlanta to ensure that you recover faster than you expect.
