This will probably not be your oldest daughter’s favorite winter break. Just three days after she comes home from college she is scheduled for a shoulder surgery that should help her not only relieve the pain from a torn ligament, but make it possible to compete with her college gymnastics team again by her senior year. This surgery means, however, that instead of returning to campus that day after Christmas and starting workouts with the rest of her teammates, your daughter will spend the entire winter break at home. She is still a ways off from getting to talk physical therapy for orthopaedics, but she will be staying home to attend follow up visits with the surgeon. And though she will be in a sling for most of seven weeks, there will soon come a time when she will be again working on a plan for physical therapy for orthopaedics to begin the rehab process.
Whether you are planning a total joint surgery or you are looking at a surgery to repair a tear and tighten ligaments, it is a certainty that you will become well versed in both pain management options and physical therapy centers. Athletes and other active people are, however, not the only people who will find themselves working with a physical therapist. in fact, elderly patients who have had a hip or knee replacement will find themselves meeting with both occupational and physical therapists even before they leave the hospital.
Strong Rehabilitation Can Help Patients Recover More Quickly
As more and more Americans live a longer life, the fact of the matter is that many of these people find themselves looking for knee, hip, and shoulder surgeries to make sure that they can live a full life. In fact, research presented to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in 2014 indicated that 4.7 million Americans were living with an artificial knee and that 2.5 million Americans were living with an artificial hip. With these numbers, then, it should probably not come as a surprise that an increasing number of physical and occupational therapists are focusing on helping this generation rehabilitate and get back to a normal, active life.
