Why You Should Finish Your Physical Therapy

While it might seem tempting to skip those last few physical therapy sessions, they can be the most crucial to your treatment. The goal of physical therapy, as stated by WebMD, is to help you regain the functions necessary to make daily activities easier. Whether you are recovering from surgery, an accident or an age-related ailment, here are some reasons you should finish your physical therapy:

 

Reduce Your Liability

If you are going to physical therapy in coordination with an insurance or workers’ compensation claim, completion of the prescribed sessions is critical. Keep in mind that insurance companies and workers’ compensation case managers are responsible for collecting all of your medical records. If you miss appointments or fail to finish physical therapy, your claim could get denied. Even if you do not feel significant improvement, make it to all of your scheduled physical therapy sessions to help prove your insurance or workers’ compensation case.

 

Gauge Your Results

Physical therapy often produces the best results toward the end of treatment. You will be able to look back at your initial sessions and track progress, which is a crucial component of treatment. For instance, range of motion progress and pain levels are documented at each appointment. Physical therapy cannot be deemed a failure or success until the very last session. Whether you go to Westmount Physiotherapy & Rehabilitation in Hamilton or to a clinic near you, you should always finish physiotherapy to know the definitive results of your complete treatment.

 

Learn DIY Techniques

The goal of physical therapy, as stated earlier, is to help you regain normal function. For this reason, you will likely learn many techniques that can be used outside of the physical therapy setting. These exercises can be important for pain relief, range of motion or motor skills. These calisthenics might need to be performed indefinitely or just periodically, but you won’t know your therapist’s recommendations until you finish your physical therapy.

 

Know Future Needs

If you have been referred to physical therapy by your general doctor or a specialist, your physical therapy results will be used in your overall treatment plan. If physical therapy is successful, then no further action will be immediately needed. However, unsuccessful physical therapy can pave the way for a surgical procedure or pain management treatment. Finishing physical therapy will rule out or confirm future healthcare needs.

 

Physical therapy is important for legal liability and your long-term health. Completion of physical therapy treatment will impact your future healthcare needs. If you do not regain normal function during your scheduled sessions, your doctor will rule out physical therapy as a treatment and make further recommendations. If you have specific questions regarding your physical therapy treatment, ask your physical therapist.

Categories: compensation case, future healthcare, normal function, physical, Physical Therapy, regain normal, techniques, therapy, therapy nbsp, therapy sessions, therapy treatment

Can Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Be Used for Cancer Patients?

In 2011, Chris Francis, of Newport, Australia, underwent radiotherapy after having a small skin cancer removed from her shin. Not only did the treatment destroy the cancer cells, but also the surrounding tissue. According to Chris, ‘I had a great big hole in my leg. Just to stand up and clean my teeth and go back to bed was agony.’ Eventually, she was referred to a therapy that would improve her wellbeing forever.

In January, Chris went to Sydney’s Prince of Wales Hospital’s hyperbaric unit. It took six weeks of daily therapy and regular wound care until her ulcer was ‘looking really good’, and now it has all but disappeared. The main health concern that people believe hyperbaric oxygen therapy is used for is “the bends” or decompression sickness in divers. However, most of the patients undergoing hyperbaric therapy at hospital-based hyperbaric units across Australia are similar to Chris; with half of the patients at PoW being treated for damage to bone or soft tissue incurred during radiation therapy. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is also used to improve the wellness of those with necrotising infections, carbon monoxide poisoning and Crohn’s disease.

While in normal air under water is 21% oxygen, for the treatment you sit or lie in a sealed chamber and breathe 100% oxygen at depths equivalent to 10-20 metres. Your lungs are saturated with oxygen while the increased atmospheric pressure drives the gas into your body’s tissues much more quickly than under normal atmospheric conditions. Therefore, your tissues can get the blood and oxygen it needs to heal to begin the healing process.

Associate professor Mike Bennett, a doctor at the PoW unit and president of the South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society, explains that for some people with cancers in the pelvic area, for example, and have suffered tissue damage during their treatment, ‘their problem is just unremitting and the only solution until recently [has been] very major, radical surgery – removing the bowel, removing the bladder, having all sorts of bags and tubes permanently attached to your tummy.’

‘Hyperbaric has turned around some of these people’s lives,’ he notes. ‘It allows the tissue to repair itself, so the bowel or the bladder or whatever’s damaged, over a period of weeks to months, slowly repairs itself and normal function, or close to normal function, is restored.’ Chris enthuses, ‘Just to be able to walk outside and hang the washing on the line, do housework – I never thought I’d enjoy that, but I’m just enjoying all that. Being free.’

Categories: cancer, chris, hyperbaric, hyperbaric oxygen, Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment, normal, normal function, Oxygen, oxygen therapy, The Bends, therapy