When we face any hand related injuries, we start losing our regular track. Is that true?
Pain distracts us, and kicks us out of our task! And thereby you feel demotivated. We all love to live a pain free life. But how do we achieve optimum hand efficiency? A hand therapist can help you in this case. Hand therapy is the extended version of occupation therapy where therapists only deal with problems associated with upper extremities.
When a patient comes across trauma or sports associated injuries, or Musculoskeletal anomalies, hand therapy treats that problem from grassroot level and provides non-invasive treatments which is a real game changer.
Hand therapy: Hand therapy refers to rehab care techniques to restore hand functionalities. Hand therapy's main goal is to help patients restore their normal functionality so that they get back their independence. Certified hand therapist (CHT) must have their five year course certification along with 4,000 hours of clinical hand therapy experience that entirely focus on upper extremity rehabilitative care.
Hand therapy is one of the specialty services offered by occupational therapists. They usually take more extensive training in integrated Hand therapy techniques.
Hand therapist used for: Hand therapist is apt for patients who have gone through upper extremity anomalies like hand, arm injuries, finger pain and so on. They also treat chronic conditions like hand arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, physical trauma, and offer post-surgery rehab care.
Hand therapy resolves following problems such as Inflammation, stiffness of joints, ligaments, tendonitis, hand ache and finger fatigue, fine-motor ailments.
Do you have traumatic injury or finger joint arthritis?
Then please make a consultation with a certified hand therapist.
Do you really need hand therapy treatment?
If you’re facing or going through chronic pain in your arms and upper extremities, you should definitely go for hand therapy. More significantly, hand pain is more annoying because it’ll prevent you from accomplishing day-to-day tasks and deteriorate quality of life.
Thus, we would say hand therapy is an excellent option for your hands because these therapy promotes the healing process.
If you’re facing problems completing the day to day household chore, or facing finger fatigue when typing on a computer or cell phone, then please take the help of a hand therapist because they will better teach you how to manage the pain while doing these kinds of jobs.
What are the advantages of hand therapy?
There are lots of advantages of hand therapy because it offers non-surgical treatment options. No as such high-dose medication is require for that therapy.
Most common hand injuries and conditions therapists use to treat with hand therapy interventions.
Such as:
- Osteoarthritis
- Tendinitis
- Fracture and dislocations
Hand therapists entail hand exercises, manual technique to minimize pain, stimulate scar healing and management, and increase range-of-motion, educate patients for pain management and other protective measures, give customized splints to protect surgical wounds, and associated home programs.
Hand therapists address complications of patients and design some orthodontic functionalities and modification in terms of hand therapy interventions. They always motivate patients and boost their mental ability to cope with the respective pain.
After evaluating patients’ actual complication, they used to design tailor-made hand therapy program, they craft treatment plan that offers optimum output depending on perspective of injury and complications
How does hand therapy help?
Hand therapists help their patients with non-invasive treatment plans. Hand therapy is undoubtedly a long-term treatment, but one can expect promising results with zero side effects, cuts & stitches. Hand therapy focuses on upper extremity recovery processes that intend to get back range of motion along with mobility.
There are a lot of hand therapy centers that offer upper-extremity rehabilitation with a package of comprehensive services.
You may expect such things like;
- Functional exercises
- Sensory education
- Ergonomics
- Pain management
- Injury prevention
All these exercises are designed to return patients to their normal life with full range of motion & independence.
Let’s check out benefits:
- Hand therapist offers non-invasive treatment option so there are no fear of bleeding, cut & stitch
- Minimize and relieve patients from long lasting pain
- Alleviate pain coming from nerve agility and complications
- Educate patients with full of sensory re-education
- Design exercise plans which can be performed at home.
- Educate patients on how to manage pain & restore functionalities with special hand-made tool
- Provide adequate mental strength to revive hand functionality
- Provide post-surgical rehab care to stimulate the healing process
Hand therapy basic treatment plan:
Exercise: All these exercises are hand and finger exercises that patients need to follow to restore muscle strength and gain top most functionalities. Patients need to continue these exercises to regain range of motion and functionality.
Strengthening: Hand therapy strengthening exercise include squeezing of a hand strengthener, squeeze ball to leverage optimum functionalities. Lifting weights and other aids are also included when patients start gaining their strength gradually.