Muscle injuries are very frequent, especially in athletes;
but they can also affect people during the most common work and daily activities.
They can essentially result from two types of causes: direct trauma or indirect traum.
DIRECT TRAUMA: in which the muscle undergoes a force that compresses it against the deeper body planes. The damage can vary from a "simple" contusion to muscle injury (breakdown of varying magnitude).
INDIRECT TRAUMA: in this type of trauma the muscle does not undergo the action of an external force. These types of lesions can occur following a sudden stretch during the contraction phase; or a violent contraction of a muscle in complete relaxation.
A muscle, or several muscle groups can suffer damage for various causes, such as: lack of training, fatigue, imbalance between muscle groups, age, climatic and environmental factors.
More specifically, there is a more specific classification:
- Contracture (excess alteration of muscle tone that occurs after physical activity and causes pain not well localizable)
- Stretching (alteration of muscle fiber function that occurs acutely
during physical activity and with well localizable pain)
- Tearing (tearing of a variable number of fibers).
In turn, the TEARS can be classified into:
- First degree (few fibers involved).
- Second degree (fair amount of fibers, less than 3/4 of the fibers).
- Third degree (almost complete or complete interruption of the muscle, more than 3/4 of the fibers).
Depending on the severity of the damage, there may be a more or less important presence of a hematoma, as a large amount of blood circulates in the muscle, being highly vascularized.
What can the Physiotherapist do for you?
After a careful EVALUATION, or following an ultrasound investigation and / or an orthopedic examination (which excludes the need for surgery in extreme cases), the physiotherapist can accelerate muscle healing through the administration of PHYSICAL THERAPY (Tecar-Sin , LIMFA Therapy, Cryo t-shock, Radial shock waves….); combining it with MANUAL THERAPY, myofascial approach, targeted stretching, elastic taping and muscle strengthening in order to re-athletize the athlete or to bring a person to carry out daily and work activities without problems.
