The end of my research is near, and that means there's only a limited number of dog gifs left. But don't be sad- here's a dog gif to begin this post!
My question this week: what are all the different types of patients who come in to CAP? By this I mean what are the different reasons/injuries which motivate patients to come in for physical therapy. The majority of patients who come in are geriatric patients who want to reduce day-to-day pain or athletes trying to get back to playing.
I noticed that there are four basic categories of patients, the two aforementioned, pre-operative patients, and patients who suffer non-sports related pain. The geriatric patients tend to come in for arthritis, knee-replacements, and other age caused pain. Their number of appointments are usually longer, since they don't have time pressure to return to a previous performance capability. On the other hand, the athletes who come in for rehab do need to return to their original, pre-injury state to participate in their sport. Most of the athletes have tears in ligaments such as the ACL, Achilles, or LCL, all central to knee and ankle function. There are also less serious sports injuries treated such as soft-tissue sprains and tendinitis or other tightness in the IT band or general knee/hip area.
The pre-operative patients may also be in the geriatric/athlete category, but they are in physical therapy for preventative measures before their surgery rather than reparative. The common knee/hip surgeries that warrant pre-operative therapy are knee or hip replacements and ligament repairs. As for patients who are neither geriatric nor sports-based, the injuries treated range from general joint pain or knee/hip tightness to sprains caused from simple accidents that are outside of sports.
All these different types of patients come in for a range of time until recovery/improvement and for various times per week and hours per appointment. Next week those are the numbers I will be looking at to finish my research. See you then!
