PROLOTHERAPY FOR POST-FRACTURE REHAB AND PAIN
If you break your
wrist, you get a cast for six weeks. When your
cast comes off, your wrist feels awful. Then you get sent for two
months of wrist therapy. At the end of the therapy, the doctor
says your x-rays look good, but your wrist is still stiff, painful,
and the range of motion is not what it should be. The doctor
discharges you and says in a few months it will be fine. Well a few
months pass and your wrist is not fine.
What the doctor or
Physical Therapist
typically won't tell you is
that if you had a force hit your wrist strong enough to
fracture it,
you can be sure that your wrist
ligaments
were damaged. What is the
worst treatment for ligament repair? Immobility! So your wrist
ligaments were damaged and then you were immobilized in a cast for
six weeks, you can bet they still aren't healed.
In my opinion to heal the wrist ligaments the best bet is
Prolotherapy. This is
why someone who has a fracture of a bone should consider getting
Prolotherapy shortly after the cast is removed. This way the
post-fracture rehabilitation can be taking place at the same time as
the post-Prolotherapy wrist ligament repair. So at the end of two
months the person has a strong wrist with full range of motion. Negating the ligament part of wrist fracture care is why a lot of
patients have post fracture
wrist pain. This also explains why
other parts of the body, notably the foot/ankle (the lower extremity
equivalent to the hand/wrist), also is notorious for having
post-fracture symptoms including pain, stiffness, swelling, and
reduced range of motion.
Prolotherapy to the ligaments in an area
after a fracture is a good idea if the ligaments are very sore to
palpation. Perhaps some day in the future this will be the standard
of care, but until then remember if you or a loved one has had a
recent fracture, consider getting Prolotherapy to the ligaments in
the fracture site so post fracture symptoms don't develop.
