Hand injuries are fairly common at the workplace or while playing a sport. Most people don’t take them seriously and end up with a long-term issue that can only be resolved with surgery. A hand injury damages your tendons, ligaments, tissues, and bones and can leave a person with both superficial and permanent scars and damage to the tissues.

Therefore, one should visit a Certified Hand Therapist (CHT) or an occupational therapist if it’s a work-related injury. Since there are different types of hand injuries, there are also different types of hand therapy for it. In this post, you will learn the kind of hand therapy best for you.

Heat modalities

Hand injury patients need instant relief from excruciating pain, so a CHT’s first call of action is to reduce the pain to make way for treatment. Heat can be applied in many ways, such as hot packs, ultrasound machines, friction massage, and paraffin wax.

Apart from pain relief, the heat also improves the blood circulation and flexibility of the muscles and tendons.

Cryotherapy

Another way of pain management in hand therapy is cryotherapy that CHT use for trauma patients. This means the affected area is frozen to remove abnormal tissues. This form of therapy is great for the soft tissue of your palm. Cryotherapy is also famously used to remove cancer cells.

Therapeutic exercises

Your CHT will help you manually with these exercises that strengthen your muscles. When you suffer from trauma on any part of your body, it becomes stiff during recovery. This is why your physician will recommend you start stiffness treatment with therapeutic exercises that increase your recovery rate and resolve the issue.

Dexterity training

Dexterity training is one of the simpler forms of hand therapy that is significant. Your CHT will ask to use a squeeze ball to strengthen your tendons, make tight fists, stretch wrists, lift and drop fingers, etc. All these slight movements provide a significant contribution to your recovery.

Therapist guiding patient for exercise.

Retro massage

This form of therapy is best for scars left behind after a hand injury. A CHT will start this treatment after a little improvement on your injury. Adhesions can be treated with retro massage, which is a significant part of physical therapy.

E-stimulation

Trauma patients usually cannot contract and expand their muscles when their joints recover. Many are also put into fracture braces and hand splints. Therefore, electric pulses are passed through the muscles to mimic the signals of neurons. This improves the blood flow, mobilization of muscles and helps with injured tissue areas.

You need a good CHT to recover from hand injuries. At Able Hands Rehabilitation, we customize your recovery treatment. Our certified hand therapists in Old Bridge, NJ, have been trained to use different techniques for trauma patients. We also do finger fracture treatments in Edison, NJ to for occupational injuries. Working with trauma patients since 1994, we recognize the challenges of the trauma patient and provide them with the best care. Contact us today for your physical therapy!