Sports Injuries

Sporting injuries can create a great deal of frustration to a person as it can force them away from a sport or activity they love, or cause ongoing pain and discomfort whilst they continue to play.

Early diagnosis and correct treatment by one of our skilled physiotherapists can greatly reduce the time away from the sport or how quickly a person will become pain-free whilst they are playing their sport. As a result, the enjoyment and performance levels will be returned much more quickly.

Typical sporting injuries include strains and sprains to muscles, joints, tendons and ligaments as well as overuse / repetitive injuries to these structures. Our physiotherapists have the assessment skills to diagnose both acute and chronic injuries.

Back Pain

Back pain is another extremely common condition that will affect most of us at some stage in our lives. It can not only cause local back pain but also contribute to hip, groin, leg and foot pain or paraesthesia. Structures in the back that can cause these symptoms to include the spinal discs, muscles, ligaments, bones and nerve tissue.

Causes of back pain include:

• Poor posture.
• Prolonged or repetitive sitting, bending or lifting.
• Weakness due to lack of exercise or being overweight.
• During pregnancy.
• Traumas such as falls, sporting collisions or vehicle accidents.

Our physiotherapists can accurately and skilfully assess the cause of your back pain, how to manage the problem in the short and long terms, and then discuss and plan the correct course of treatment for you. Often long-standing low back pain requires exercises and education to manage the problem successfully.

Neck Pain

Neck pain is a very common condition that can also contribute to headaches, shoulder and upper back pain. Physiotherapy can greatly assist these problems.

The neck’s role is to support and move your head, which has significant weight. As a result, it is vulnerable to injury from prolonged periods of forwarding head posture such as being in front of the computer, laptops, television or playing computer games/devices. Other causes of neck pain can be traumas. For example, a whiplash injury from a vehicle accident, or numerous micro-injuries to the neck over the years, such as heavy lifting or sporting collisions, can cause degenerative neck changes.

Our physiotherapists can accurately and skilfully assess the origin of your pain and then discuss and plan the correct course of treatment for you.

A wide variety of treatment approaches can be used depending on the assessment.

Joint Pain

Peripheral Joints are joints other than the spine. Examples of these joints are the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle and foot.

These joints can be injured by trauma such as a fall or sporting accident, overloading and repetition on the joint, or arthritis (wear and tear arthritis called osteoarthritis or systemic arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis).

Traumatic injuries to these joints may include dislocations, subluxations, sprains, strains and tears. Overloading injuries may include tendonitis/tendinosis, bursitis and synovitis.

Our physiotherapists have the diagnostic and assessment skills to assess the origin of your joint problem and then plan the correct course of treatment. They will give you advice about the likely causes of your problem and how to best prevent it from happening again in the future.

Arthritis

Physiotherapy can drastically reduce ongoing pain felt by arthritis sufferers. It helps to keep your joints and muscles active, while providing you with home exercise tools to improve overall quality of life. People with arthritis will be given an exercise program that it tailored to their exact needs, as well as advice on how to integrate exercise to assist with pain relief. Our physiotherapists will help you understand how arthritis affects you, while getting you moving, stretching and strengthening affected and surrounding joints.

Headaches

Headaches can severely affect your quality and enjoyment of life. There are many causes of headaches, but the most common type of headache is caused by problems to the structures of the neck. These include the cervical joints, muscles and nerve tissue. It can present in the back of the head and upper neck, temples, forehead, back of ears or eyes.

Headaches can be caused by poor posture, tension and stress, trauma such as whiplash, prolonged poor neck positionings such as in front of computers or arthritic joints in the neck. Our physiotherapists can accurately and skilfully assess the origin of your pain to determine if they feel it is likely to be coming from the neck or not. If they feel it is coming from the neck they will choose a variety of approaches that best suits your problem.

They will give you advice about the likely causes of your headaches and how to best manage them, as well as assist you in how to prevent them from recurring in the future.

If not, they will liaise with your local doctor to determine other possible causes of your headaches if further investigations are indicated.

Post-Operative

Ducker Physio is the sole physiotherapy provider at Calvary Central Districts Hospital where there are 12 orthopaedic surgeons operating there from various private orthopaedic surgical practices throughout South Australia.

We also have numerous other orthopaedic surgeons refer to us from other hospitals due to our expertise and experience treating a vast array of post-operative conditions that are ever changing with new surgical techniques.

We see you from the time you wake up from your surgery each day until discharge and then the appropriate follow up rehabilitation in our rooms in close conjunction with your surgeon and his protocols. Your progress is closely monitored, managed and progressed appropriately to you as well as within the surgeon’s guidelines. Normal recovery from all surgical procedures is extremely variable person to person due to many factors, hence why progress must be tailored specifically to your recovery.

Strain

Muscle pain can more often than not be attributed to strain, caused by over stretching or exerting your range of movement. Strains can vary from mild to severe, with the extent of the pull or tear ultimately determining the treatment plan. Symptoms of muscle strains include:

• Muscle pain
• Weakness
• Bruising
• Muscle tightness
• Inability to stretch muscle without pain

Depending on severity, strains can take anywhere between a few days and weeks to fully repair. Our physiotherapists can have you on the road to recovery from your very first visit.

Work Injuries

Injuries at work can occur to people doing heavy and active occupations that require lifting or repetitive work as well as to people that do inactive occupations such as desk-bound work.

Common injuries that are seen in the active occupations include lower back /neck strains from lifting and overuse injuries to muscles and tendons from using the same muscle groups all day. For example, working on a production line. In the inactive group, common injuries include postural neck and back pain from sitting most of the day or from poor positioning at the workstation. Repetitive use of the computer mouse, keyboard and telephone can cause overuse injuries as well to muscles and tendons.

Our physiotherapists can assist you to recover quickly from your injury and to return to work as soon as possible.

Education may include about correct lifting techniques, workstation setups, pause breaks and using different muscle groups and techniques for repetitive tasks.

DVA

These injuries require initially to be assessed by a doctor and referred for physiotherapy treatment for those who have a DVA card. Those Veterans’ that have a Gold card referred by their doctor are permitted to have physiotherapy treatment for any appropriate physiotherapy condition they may have. We report back from time to time to their doctor how the condition is progressing. Those White Card Holders may only have certain conditions approved by DVA.

CDM (formerly known as EPC)

These chronic conditions require initially to be assessed by a doctor and referred if deemed appropriate for physiotherapy treatment. Patients need to qualify with certain chronic medical condition criteria that your local doctor fully understands. If you qualify, Medicare will pay a significant rebate up to 5 treatments per year for allied health treatment such as physiotherapy. There is a small gap to pay above this rebate. Reception staff will explain how this works.

Self Management & Home Exercise

Your treatment plan and recovery doesn’t stop when you leave our practice. We are committed to improving our patient’s conditions as quickly as possible with minimal pain, which is why we prescribe them with a home exercise and management plan. Our plans are tailored to each patient’s specific condition, with each one working to target the specific source of pain.

This helps to both improve recovery time, and empower the patient by giving them control over their condition. Exercise and stretching are pinnacle parts of home exercise programs.