Physical Therapy Treatments and Modalities

When you suffer from a musculoskeletal injury or other movement dysfunction, your doctor may provide you with a referral to a physical therapist. This individual and their team dedicate their career to helping patients decrease their pain while they improve their mobility.

You could experience your symptoms mildly, or they may severely limit your mobility. However, several treatment options exist that can help patients overcome these situations. A physical therapist will often employ physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay to augment other therapy methods and achieve patient rehabilitation goals.

Furthermore, a PT may also use these processes to decrease pain and inflammation. They will prescribe physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay in order to help improve endurance, strength, as well as range of motion.

Your friends from Progressive Therapy Center want to impart of some information that we hope can educate you on some common therapeutic modalities, in addition to what you should expect from your first meeting with a physical therapist.

Physical Therapy Exercise

Exercise in physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay represent controlled physical stress applications. PTs administer this treatment to your body to help improve strength, flexibility, and range of motion. Exercise may represent passive or active methods.

Passive exercise involves relaxation while a physical therapist and their team apply stress to afflicted areas. A common example of passive exercise is hamstring stretching. To properly stretch your hamstring, another individual lifts your leg, elongating the hamstring muscle.

Active exercise represents techniques that you perform under your own power. This might include walking on a treadmill, push-ups, sit-ups, etc.

When you attend physical therapy for the first time, they will likely ensure that you engage in some exercise forms. This is to help your mobility, as well as to gauge your condition. They will also prescribe some at-home exercises to help expedite your return to normal function.

Ultrasound

Ultrasound is a deep heating modality that physical therapists use to treat a variety of musculoskeletal conditions that include, strains, sprains, and tendonitis. Physical therapists will administer ultrasound utilizing a wand that they call a sound head. They press the sound head to the skin, moving it in a small circular motion near the injury site.

Electrical Stimulation

Electrical stimulation plays its own role in physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay, decreasing pain around injured tissues. A physical therapist may apply electrical stimulation to contract muscles. This helps the muscles relearn proper function and motion.

Traction

Physical therapists commonly apply traction to help patients that suffer from lower back or neck pain. They begin this modality by strapping you into a mechanical machine with a vest that supports your ribs, as well as a device to secure your pelvis. The PT will then stabilize these restraints with straps before applying force with the machine.

A physical therapist can apply cervical traction as you either sit or lie. Small weights provide traction force as you reside comfortably in a chair or on a table. Traction helps separate joints and disc spaces in the lower back and neck. As a result, this decreases pressure on spinal nerves to alleviate pain.

Joint Mobilization

This treatment involves passively mobilizing joints in your body in specific directions. The process decreases pain and improves overall mobility. It is important to think about your joints similar to hinges. All of our joints display a gliding motion that occurs as we move.

Physical therapists focus on increasing this gliding motion during joint mobilization. The therapist will move each joint to a specified degree depending on the amount of pressure and force they can apply to the joint.

Although joint mobilization represents a passive treatment, the PT may educate you on self-mobilizing techniques. This will help you manage your condition independently at home. The goal behind this education is enabling the swiftest and efficient recovery possible while possibly preventing future issues.

Massage

Despite most patients possessing a good understanding of basic massage, its role in physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay is a bit different. Although the therapist will still use their hands to knead injured tissues to decrease pain, the specific PT manipulation also improves circulation and decreases muscle tension. The common PT techniques involving massage include effleurage, petrissage, and trigger point manipulation.

Physical Therapeutic Modalities in Palmetto Bay from Progressive Therapy Center

Despite physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay representing an ideal solution to help you both feel and move better, these techniques should never replace active exercise for your condition. For this reason, our therapists incorporate exercise into any treatment regimen. A majority of problems that arise in functional limitation resolve ideally from correct movement strategies applied by a physical therapist.

Our facility is located in the heart of Pinecrest, not far from the Palmetto Bay area. As a state-of-the-art physical therapy center, Progressive Therapy Center is dedicated to helping individuals that suffer from chronic and acute conditions in the South Florida community.

We take pride in serving as a crucial resource for patient recoveries. This involves providing these patients with a comprehensive, patient-focused physical therapy administration. Our team can help you recover from surgery, injury, in addition to both chronic and acute conditions in the most comfortable, welcoming environment possible.

For more information on physical therapeutic modalities in Palmetto Bay from Progressive Therapy Center, contact our dedicated and concerned team today. We want to help you streamline and optimize your recovery as swiftly and efficiently as possible!