Orthopedic Treatment: Ligament Reconstructive Therapy
Injuries to joints and tendons often get more common as you age, leading to excruciatingly painful and disabling musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis and back pain. If you suffer from such chronic conditions, orthopedic treatment could offer effective, non-surgical treatment options to help manage the pain and stimulate healing.
Orthopedic practitioners use a technique called ligament reconstructive therapy to treat these conditions and restore joint and bone function.
What is ligament reconstructive therapy?
This is a treatment that targets stretched or damaged tendons and ligaments in areas such as the shoulders, neck, back and knees, restoring their integrity and thus reducing inflammation. By targeting the source of the pain, the orthopedist can bring relief and restored function of the affected area. The treatment involves the administration of various injections containing restorative solutions along with pain-numbing medication.
Musculoskeletal injuries damage your ligaments and blood vessels, restricting the flow of blood into the injured area. This results in the buildup of toxins in the affected cells, resulting in pain and inflammation. The lack of blood flow also reduces the supply of nutrients needed for healing, leading to a loss of the body's ability to repair damaged tissue.
Without treatment, these injured ligaments and supporting structures may become loose over time, leading to the bones they hold in place swinging out of the joints, causing painful muscle spasms and the eventual developing to joint arthritis.
How orthopedic therapy can help
Ligament reconstructive therapy is usually very effective at stabilizing loose and injured ligaments, promoting their healing and halting the development of arthritis. The treatment entails the injection of an anesthetic such as lidocaine into the damaged area, reducing painful spasms that restrict blood flow into the area. The increased blood flow encourages the body's natural healing mechanism to kick in, leading to accelerated recovery.
The main part of the treatment, however, involves the injection of a stimulating solution containing a naturally occurring sugar such as dextrose into sites of pain, weakness and breakdown. This supplies rich nutrients into the injured area, stimulating healing.
Orthopedists may also inject Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP), a stimulating solution derived from your very own blood. This blood is put in a centrifuge machine to harvest activated platelets that are usually responsible for stimulating healing in injured tissue. The resultant solution is highly concentrated in healing cells and growth factors, and is injected directly into the damaged ligaments and tendons to boost your body's healing mechanism and lead to quicker recovery.
With these techniques, orthopedic practitioners are often able to prevent the advancement of ligament damage to full blow joint arthritis.
To learn more, contact an office like Burlington County Orthopaedic Specialist Pa.
Share