Physiotherapists in Hove treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Calf Muscle Tears

The calf muscles are large and powerful muscles in the lower leg, the main ones being named the gastrocnemius and soleus. These muscles push the body weight along in gait and help us run, exerting very high forces in the process. If the forces exerted by someone in a powerful activity exceed the ability of the calf muscle to cope then an muscle tear results. A tear of the calf muscle occurs very suddenly and is extremely painful, with swelling developing very quickly. The person is unable to put their heel down as it is much too painful to stretch the calf that way and they often walk on tiptoe if they can weight beat at all.

Physiotherapy treatment initially aims at reducing the pain and swelling with ice, compression and the provision of walking aids to reduce the stresses through the calf. Analgesics are also useful and once the pain has reduced then active movement of the foot in a downwards direction can start contracting the muscles again. Once the foot can be placed flat on the floor then normal gait can be encouraged with a heel raise in the shoe to prevent stretching. Muscle strengthening can then be prescribed by the physio as rehabilitation proceeds.

Disc Pain

It is not possible to diagnose discogenic pain by clinical examination of a patient as there are no specific examination techniques for this condition. Various physiotherapy techniques, such as testing centralisation and peripheralisation, show some connections with having disc-related problems, but do not go as far as to solidly diagnose disc pain. The accepted way of diagnosing this type of problem is to attack the disc itself with techniques such as discography. Discography involves inserting a needle right into the disc and injecting a contrast material which will show up on x-ray examination. The most important point is that the test is only positive if it brings on the typical pain the patient is normally complaining of.

The injected material allows the shape of the nucleus to be seen inside the disc and whether there any problems with it. The discs nearby are also tested and they should be negative if there is to be sufficient confidence in the findings from the symptomatic disc. Internal disc disruption (IDD) is quoted as the underlying pathology responsible for lumbar pain of disc origin, where the internal structure of the disc is altered by fissures occurring radially from the centre towards the outside.