4 Reasons Why Your Sports Injury Needs Medical Attention

No matter what type of sport you play or activity you’re involved with, if you experience an injury, you need the right medical professional to help you get back in the game.

At Regenerative Spine and Pain Institute, we’re sports injury specialists who can give you an accurate diagnosis and treatment to help you recover quickly. We also give guidance on how to avoid future mishaps. 

With double board-certified anesthesiologist and pain management specialist Dr. Ronak Patel leading our team, you’ve landed at the right place. Here’s what he’d like you to know about sports injuries and why yours needs attention.

Sports injuries explained

If you play a sport, work out, or participate in athletic activities, it’s not uncommon to experience an injury. They can happen to your muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, and other parts of your body.

Sometimes it’s hard to know when to tough it out. Typically, you can treat a minor injury at home with the RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) method. Taking over-the-counter medicines to control your inflammation and pain can also help.

However, some injuries require medical intervention, which might call for physical therapy, immobilizing the injured area, and depending on its severity, possibly surgery.

While it may be easy to brush off a sports injury and hope it will work itself out, sometimes that can do more harm than good. Your injury might be acute or develop into something more chronic over time.

Why you should see a sports injury specialist

To avoid more complications down the road, we suggest that you pursue medical attention if you get hurt. Here are four reasons why:

1. To continue playing sports

To be able to keep doing what you love, you need an accurate diagnosis for your injury. As sports injury specialists, we can prescribe the right treatment to help you recover as quickly as possible. We know you don’t want to sit on the sidelines, so we put a plan in place to get you on the road to recovery quickly.

2. To stop the damage

Though you might think you don’t have any significant damage, you could be wrong. If your injury is ignored, it could turn into something worse and cause long-term damage, which can deter you from being active in the future.

3. To get guidance on how to protect yourself

Once we know how you injured yourself, we can look at the root cause. We can then provide guidance and direction on how you can protect yourself from injury again. For example, we might talk about wearing the proper equipment, or discuss how to warm up your body with certain stretching exercises to prepare your muscles for strain and impact.

4. To monitor your healing progress

You need medical supervision to let you know when you’re fully healed, so you can get back to being active. We can monitor you along the way to make sure your injury heals safely and correctly. Once it does, you should be able to get back at it with full confidence.

If you get hurt while playing your sport, working out, or otherwise being active, don’t delay seeking out medical attention. You always want to err on the safe side so you can continue doing what you love to do.

To learn more, reach out to our team at our offices in Plainsboro or Manalapan Township, New Jersey, for an appointment. Simply call or book your visit online today.