Musculoskeletal Disorder

Musculoskeletal Disorders

There are a lot of causes of musculoskeletal disorders, arising from acute sprains to overuse injuries, sports injuries to degeneration causing pain. However, most of these disorders arise from either weakness/tightness in muscles, stiffness in joints and/or poor posture.

What should I expect in my physiotherapy session?

Come dress comfortably so that the area to be assessed can be easily seen. If you have any X-rays, MRI films or reports pertaining to your area of pain, please feel free to bring them along. It would be beneficial to our physiotherapists to better understand your radiological changes that might be causing your pain.

We normally start our assessment with a subjective assessment. Through a comprehensive interview to identify the of the cause of the pain, we would formulate a series of specific test in our physical examination of the area of pain to determine the cause of the disorder. In the interview questions, other than questions like the duration of pain, how did the pain start, was there any particular activity that caused the pain, we might dwell deeper into your activities of daily living, job, hobbies, etc to better understand your condition.

In our physical examination, besides checking your range of movement of the affected area, palpating your area of pain, checking your muscle flexibility and strength, we would also check the accessory movement of your joints. We have also put you through some functional or sports specific assessment to better understand your condition. We may also employ certain orthopaedic physical assessment to determine the structures involved that might be causing your pain.

Following our subjective and objective assessment, we would then formulate a tailor program of treatment for you. The treatment may include joints or tissue mobilization, pain management modalities like ultrasound, heat, ice, or even electrical stimulation. If our physiotherapists deem that manipulation of your joints is warranted, we would explain the risk and benefit involve in manipulation so that an informed decision can be made by you. Stretching and strengthening exercises would also be taught as a home exercise program that should be done as prescribed to enable you to reap the best possible result from the treatment. In certain cases, close supervision of the exercises may be required and we would have our Sports trainer to supervise the prescribe exercises by our Physiotherapist.

How many sessions would be required?

The number of sessions would really vary on the type of injury/pain that you are experiencing. Depending on your goals of the treatment, may it be just being pain-free or returning to your sport, the number of session would defer. Physiotherapy is an active rehab process. Besides coming for your treatment, where joint mobilization, soft tissue/deep tissue mobilization would be done together with pain management modalities, you must play an active role in your rehab by doing the prescribed exercises in your home exercise program. If posture is the cause of your pain, our physiotherapist would work closely with you to give you the best advice.

Return to Sport / Activities

Our physiotherapists strive to return you to your sport/activity that you love to do as soon as we can. We even stock a range of supports in our clinic that might enable you to return to your sport safely. We even provide sports taping to support your joints if you have a competitive sport to participate, to provide more confidence to you while you compete.

Does No Pain means I’ve recovered?

The absence of pain doesn’t always mean that the injury had fully recovered and neither does the constant existence of pain mean you are not recovering. Pain is a very complex issue so we may use more objective measurements to chart your improvement. Pain-free range of movement or even ability to perform certain task without pain may be used as a measurement of improvement. The absence of pain may be an indication that the source of pain may be under control but steps must be taken to prevent a recurrence of the pain. Thus strengthening exercises and stretches must still be done, together with postural or specific exercises must be done to keep the pain at bay.