When performed correctly, surgery can be a wonderful tool to help correct a health condition and assist a person in improving their quality of life. However, even when surgery goes exactly as expected, there’s one thing that can’t be avoided – pain. Surgery is a traumatic experience on the body, and oftentimes soft tissues and muscles need to be cut in order to access the surgical site and perform the operation, which will lead to pain during recovery.
So while some pain is expected during your recovery from surgery, what happens if pain lingers longer than it should while you’re recovering? If you need help calming pain related to your surgical recovery, consider turning to a physical therapist.
How A PT Can Help With Post-Op Pain
A physical therapist can help manage post-surgical pain in a number of ways. We can help treat pain associated with:
- Structural Recovery – When tissues are cut in order to perform the surgery, or if swelling and inflammation compress structures, you may feel pain and discomfort. We can help to strengthen injured structures or improve blood flow and lymphatic drainage to reduce swelling, which in turn will help to decrease pain.
- Range of Motion Issues – Your recovery is a crucial time period for reestablishing range of motion and mobility in the recovering area. By helping you safely improve your range of motion, we can prevent discomfort that could come about due to inhibited joint or muscle mobility.
- Scar tissue formation – Scar tissue is your body’s way of closing up a wound site, but if you’re not careful, it can also cause problems. Physical therapy can help to break up large formations of scar tissue that can sometimes encapsulate or compress nerves, which can trigger a pain sensation in the brain. A physical therapist can ensure scar tissue forms in a healthy way so that crucial internal structures remain undisturbed.
- New Stress Displacement – Some surgeries alter the way our body displaces stress. For example, in patients who undergo a spinal fusion procedure, the vertebrae nearest the fusion site will inherently handle more stress due to the newly limited flexibility of the fused vertebral section. We can help you understand how your posture and body mechanics play a role in stress distribution throughout your body so that you don’t develop new pains in other areas.
We’ve helped countless patients put their surgery-related pain in the past, and we can do the same for you. But don’t just take our word for it, check out some of the satisfied reviews from patients who have already gone through the process, including Cindy H., who said:
“OrthoRehab has focused on my pain in ways that other physical therapy groups weren’t able to. I HIGHLY recommend Renata and OrthoRehab to anyone frustrated with continual pain and issues related to surgeries.”
For more information, or to set up an appointment with one of our physical therapists, reach out to our Minneapolis clinic at (612) 339-2041, or call our Edina clinic at (952) 922-0330.
PT of Costa Rican National Soccer Team for 2007 World Cup in Victoria, CAN. Clinical Instructor for University of Minnesota Doctor of Physical Therapy Affiliations
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