Factors Involved In Recovery Times for Soft Tissue Injuries

A common question we hear as practitioners is “how long it will take to recover from my injury?”. Managing recovery expectations is an important but difficult part of what we do and predicting recovery times is not straightforward.

Major recovery time factors

These are the major recovery time factors:

• Cause of injury, location and tissues involved.
• Grade of injury
• Age
• General health and medication
• First aid and remedy treatment
• Cause of injury, location and tissues involved.

Running at high speed and over-stretching are very different scenarios, however both can cause similar soft tissue injuries at the same anatomical location but have very different healing times. In this case, the overstretching injury may take longer to heal.

The location of an injury makes a difference to healing time. Muscles that have very little time to rest usually take much longer to heal. For example, the muscles involved in breathing and the muscles involved in postural stability have very little time to rest.

Different tissues regenerate at different rates. Generally, the greater the blood supply to the tissue, the quicker the recovery time. Therefore, muscle heals quicker than tendon and tendon heals quicker than ligament.

Grades of Injuries

Injuries are typically graded from 1 to 3. We will provide an explanation of what each grade involves:

Grade 1

Grade 1 involves a tear of only a few tissue fibres with minor swelling and discomfort. There may also be minimal loss of strength and range of movement.

Grade 2

Grade 2 involves more damage to the tissue with a significant loss of strength and movement.

Grade 3

Grade 3 occurs when a tear extends across the entire cross-section and completely ruptures the tissue. The pain from a grade 3 can be less as the muscle cannot contract and put strain on the injury.

If you have a soft tissue injury and would like advise from one of our practitioners, or if you would like more information, book an appointment with one of our Massage Therapists here!