Initial rehabilitation steps for ankle injury

Almost all have once experienced an ankle injury in our lifetime. The degree of damage may vary from a mild sprain to major ligament damage. Almost all the sports participants will narrate to you several incidents when they sprain their ankles. One the ankle is damaged the patient will want to recover as quickly as possible because their daily activities will be compromised this is the time to visit a physical therapist because a physical therapist is the only person which will help you to speed up the recovery process some of the most basic steps for the rehabilitation of ankle injury are

• RICE treatment

The immediate and initial treatment of an ankle sprain provided by a physical therapist for any healthcare provider is the rise method of treatment this method helps to reduce ankle swelling and elevate pain immediately

Rest:

After the first 24 to 48 hours of injury make sure you take rest because it is a critical treatment period and in this period activity needs to be limited or reduced to zero if possible after 48 hours gradually put weight on the ankle as much as ankle can bear  without severe pain and discontinue to use crutch  when you can walk without any limp in your gait

Ice: 

After any type of acute injury ice application is one of the effective steps to reduce swelling and press the pain it helps to reduce the inflammation so that any disability because of inflammation doesn’t occur

Compression: 

Always try to compress the injury in the early phase of ankle sprain treatment using an ace bandage wrap the ankle from the toes all the way to the top of your calf muscles and overlap the elastic wrap by one half of the width of the wrap wrap should be tight but it doesn’t cut off circulation to the foot

Elevation: 

Always keep your sprained ankle higher than your heart as often as possible this help to reduce this swelling by reducing the direct blood flow to the injury keep in mind that propping your ankle on a chair doesn’t elevate it above your heart

Range of motion exercise

The very first step after the rice treatment towards the recovery of your sprain ankle is to practice range of motion exercises by your physical therapist so that your normal functional mobility can be regained. mobility can be limited by pain and swelling therefore to treat the restricted motion try to reduce the pain and swelling of your ankle after ankle injuries range of motion activities are started as soon as possible in very rare cases injuries required complete immobilisation for long times 

after injury immediately check your healthcare provider and your physical therapist so that they can advise you when it is OK to start motion activities the most common range of motion activity recommended by physical therapist is to write the alphabet in space with your big toe this will help you to regain your range of motion effectively