If you're an athlete, you understand the potential risks that come along with living an active lifestyle, regardless of the specific sport you play. Depending on the sport, risks of certain injuries may be quite high. This is where it can be helpful to have a chiropractic team that you trust and that you can call anytime you experience a sports-related injury.
Here at Washington Chiropractic, sports injury treatment is one of our many areas of expertise. Our goal is to provide you with the highest level of care to determine the cause of your pain and treat it properly so you can get back to performing your best.
A good rule of thumb is if you are able to bear weight, move your injured limb and are not bleeding / have no obvious fracture, we may be a good first choice for injury evaluation.
Injury Evaluation
An accurate diagnosis is the first step in creating a treatment plan for a sports injury. Dr. Delgado will perform a thorough orthopedic and neurologic exam prior to our chiropractic exam. Our first goal in injury evaluation is making sure that you and your injury will be best treated in our office. If the answer to that is no – we have a large network of specialists that we will refer you to. Our team is also very experienced in diagnostic imaging including X-ray and MRI.
Injury Treatment
We use many methods of treating your injury, but our general philosophy follows a passive care to active care model. This means that your initial treatment most likely includes a variation on PRICE (protect – rest – ice – compress – elevate). From there may do a combination of taping, manual therapy and manipulation until the healing has progressed enough to begin active care. Active care typically consists of stretches, exercises to strengthen and improve flexibility. Once the injury is pain-free we finally move into sport-specific activities to get you ready to return to play.
PASSIVE CARE —> ACTIVE CARE
Injury Prevention
If you are prone to injury or have recovered from an injury, you may want to stack the odds in your favor. Periodic maintenance evaluations and treatments will allow us to detect imbalances that may lead to re-injury. A typical maintenance treatment will include components of prior visits – ie. manual therapy, chiropractic manipulation, etc. At these visits we can also check on your home care including taping, exercises, etc.
Call Washington Chiropractic at (309) 444-5800 for any sports related injury or prevention needs!