Return from injury timeframe

[swindon-kev]

HI everyone, I have recently started as a sports therapist with a local rugby club, I was asked last week how many weeks intill a player will be fit again form their injury. When i hear about players being injured they are normally given a rough date to return to play, my question is how do they know and how should i do this?? will it just come with experience with different types of injuries and learning this way?
Hope I make sense.
Thank you for your help

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[halacey]

Physios know as we are trained to take into consideration length of time for various tissues to heal eg bone, tendon etc. Even then it can still be a rough estimate depending on the type of injury/surgery and how the person responds.
In addition if the person concerned has any preexisting medical conditions such as diabetes this will affect healing and recovery time. That can also be said for preexisting problems with say a joint that has been injured before. return to playing dates should not be set in stone and a player should never be cleared for playing until passing all relevant fitness tests without significant reproduction of symptoms or ill effects.
Take a read through Dandy and Edwards core texts on healing

[ophqui]

Read more! You should be able to find prognoses for common injuries like muscle strains etc no problem, then its just a case of knowing your physiology, inflammatory process, stages of healing etc. Lots of it just comes with experience though mate once you've seen 5 or 6 hamstring strains you'll know when one is better or worse, and roughly how long you take to rehab them. add a bit of time for previous injuries to the area, use your clinical judgement to know when a player needs a more safety first approach to their rehab. Also talk to the player. if they've had something similar before they probably know how long its going to take them to recover and its just a case of guiding them through the process

[physiobob]

There is a number of issues in play here:

1. The length of time for the tissue structures to heal
2. The length of time for the neurological connections to function normally (in the case of things like reciprocal inhibition etc)
3. The time for functional movement return
4. The time for performance movement to return to that required by their sport etc

The player should always be tested functionally 'off the field' to check that they are able to perform what they need to 'on the field' before they are given the all clear. This might mean working them into fatigue to see what happens, not just after 5 mins, but after say 20-30mins of continuous performance.

There is no golden 'time frame'. But the tissue healing as others have mentioned is the starting point.

[swindon-kev]

HI guys thank you for all the advice, will take on board what you've said.