Question: should inflammation be promoted or restricted?

[alexyc]

Hi, I'm a student from Italy, and i would like to ask you a question... help is greatly appreciated

After an injury, should inflammation be promoted or restricted by for example using anti-inflammatory drugs? and why?

my email address is [email protected]

10x for your help

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[sdkashif]

To prevent inflammation is necessary to inhibit further injury to the affected tissues. For detail see any good Pathology book for relevent topic on inflammation.

[Physiobase]

Well I suppose it depends. Inflammation is sometimes a response to injury and is an important healing reaction. In some cases we would not wish to prevent its course.

I know there has been a lot of discussion on ankle sprains and letting inflammation take it's course. Also surgeons repairing ACL's immediately post trauma to take advantage of this reaction.

So be careful on just thinking inflammation is bad...NOT ALWAYS 8o

[jaishingdia]

well if you think about the uses for applying ultrasound to soft tissue injuries...it actually increases the inflammatory response by increasing vasodialation and proliferation ect ect. this speeds up the healing process by increasing inflammation. but remember you must not have anti-inflammatory drugs with this one!!!

[friendlypain]

Hi Alexyc

Inflammation is not a bad process and should be involved in any healing process of the body. As with most processes in the body, it is the body that over reacts and allows inflammation to run out of control which hinders the process by allowing excess scar tissue to form over the injured site.

What does this mean....

Lets take a strain injury to a quad muscle. In the acute phase you place ice on the injury while taping the knee in a flexed position (quads are in their most extended length). The ice will limit the amount of leakage from the local blood vessels through reflexed constriction, while the muscle, in its lengthen position, allows the scar tissue to form appropriately so as not to create a scab that rips or tears off through loads in normal ranges of motion.

If you allow the inflammation to run rampant, then a wad of tissue will form over the injury and will be easily injured again through loads in normal ranges of motion. This will allow a state of re-injury and re-inflammation to be experienced by the patient many many times over the course of their lifes.

Anti-inflammatories are a two edge sword and should be approached intelligently. ICE is the best anti-inflammatory out there and is site specific so as not to affect any other sites that are healing. Anti-inflammatories are great if the patient realizes that they have not fully recovered and stay away from activity (especially activity that caused the injury). It is safer, in my opinion, to use ice only so the patient knows when the body does not want to go through a range of motion because of further injury.

As for anti-inflammatories that are used in chronic cases of inflammation, I just leave that to the specialists. I know what I would do but there is the quality of life factor in this situation.

Adamo

[neurospast]

I am puzzled here it seems that everyone feels it is a good idea to promote inflamation since it is a natural response of the body. I would say it is a good idea to control an inflamation. I do understand that the bodyly response to an injury is an inflamation and as far as I can see it is a symptom of desoving the rubish caused by an injury and building up again as on a building site. If though you stimulate it to much, to much rubbish is produced and as on a building site to be able to built one has to get rid of the rubish before rebuilding can occur. Does anyone think that it is a good idea to stimulate an sciatica? Just as an example.
Cheers