Functional bandaging in Monaco and Sanremo

Functional Bandaging – Treatment

At private practice in Sanremo and/or at patient’s house

About

Functional bandaging technique

Functional bandaging protects, supports and selectively discharges sections of a functional unit (such as a joint), it controls movements, allows for functional stresses and hinders extreme movements.

Adhesive bandages offering dynamic restraint, the so-called functional bandaging, can be considered soft and customized supports protecting capsular-ligament and/or muscle-tendon structures from harmful or potentially harmful mechanical stresses without limiting or preventing the physiological articulation of the corresponding limb.

Functional bandaging::
– Protects the injured functional units without preventing the functioning of all the other perfectly healthy ones;
– Eliminates the inconveniences of inactivity delaying post-trauma recovery;
– Has therapeutic effects, but it mainly acts as a prevention and post-trauma rehabilitation (Louisiana), too.
All this without excluding the use of plaster cast being that valid in the treatment of the most serious traumatic injuries, such as fractures.

Functional bandaging – Characteristics, functions and technique

CHARACTERISTICS OF FUNCTIONAL BANDAGING

Functional bandaging boosts the following characteristics:
– Stability to the effects of vigorous movements, to muscle functional expansion and to sweat tending to detach it from the skin.
– Efficacy and resistance to functional stresses, in the sense of meeting both the athlete’s individual needs and the specific biomechanical requirements.

FUNCTIONS OF FUNCTIONAL BANDAGING

Thanks to its peculiar characteristic of ensuring protective restraint to single functional units while keeping all the others functionally active, functional bandaging grants:
– Mechanical actions
– Generic or non-specific protective actions

MECHANICAL ACTIONS
They mainly depend on the therapist and provide for the following protective mechanical effects:
1 – Support and functional relief – it neutralises mechanical functional stresses acting on the protected unit.
2 – Joint stabilization:
– Active joint stabilization: active stabilization depends on the so-called “patch effect” which, by enhancing the reflex responses of the peripheral proprioceptive afferents, creates neuro-muscular effects balancing the joint play.
– Passive joint stabilization: extrinsic stabilization prevents abnormal movements or pathological deviations of the joint heads exceeding the physiological tension limit of the protected ligament (tape).

GENERIC OR NON-SPECIFIC PROTECTIVE ACTIONS
They are mediated by the generic restraint action of the adhesive bandage and include the following protective effects:
– Antalgic and anti-inflammatory effect – it results from functional rest of the injured unit due to bandaging and it favours the athletes’ prompt and early recovery.
– Psychological effect – it depends on the local stiffness of the bandage granting athletes a beneficial sense of security.
– Vasomotor trophic effect, in the case of elastic adhesive “boot” bandaging for painful ankles inducing a real vascular massage by stimulating the so-called “pump” effect thus improving painful symptoms.

FUNCTIONAL BANDAGING TECHNIQUE

It depends on the specific mechanical effect required.
It involves the following actions:
– Immobilize one and only the functional unit which has become insufficient so as to assist or support its effectiveness;
– Strengthen specific functional units;
– Neutralize the damaging functional stresses on structures vulnerable to load stress.
The technique used aims at the following simultaneous actions:
– Limit joint excursion;
– Prevent maximal muscle contraction;
– Modulate both contraction type and intensity.

BANDAGING TYPES

THERAPEUTIC BANDAGING: Traditional bandaging

After diagnosis, it must safely promote the healing process and grant effective and lasting stabilization.
Application: 4 to 7 days or longer.

PREVENTIVE BANDAGING: Taping

In the case of patients or activities considered at risk for a specific area which has already suffered from trauma or with congenital weakness (laxity, etc.)
Application: during sports activity.

REHABILITATION BENDAGING: Traditional bandaging with overlapping bandages and tape

During resumption of social/professional and/or sports activity it protects the area of the trauma even before the healing process is complete.
This type of bandaging is useful after surgery.
Application: 4 to 7 days, 1 to 3 rehabilitation sessions.

CONTAINMENT BANDAGING: Traditional bandaging with overlapping bandages

It helps drain and reduce oedema and hematoma in a patient after acute phase.
Application: 4 to 7 days or until volume change.

Functional bandaging – Treatable pathologies and applications

Muscles	Strains, tears, partial fractures, bruises, inflammation and injuries to fascia.
Ligaments and capsule	Strains, tears, injuries, isolated fractures and bruises.
Tendons	Strains, inflammation, insertional irritation, bursitis, acute and chronic tendinopathies.
Bones	Fissures, inflammation of the periosteum, some types of compound fractures.
Cartilage	Not serious injuries, sub-dislocations/dislocations and support after cast immobilization.

	POST-SURGERY
	Treatments after total immobilization subsequent to surgery (joint and musculoskeletal system).

	DEGENERATIVE PROCESSES
	Initial osteoarthritis
	Permanent inflammation caused by overexertion on muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and capsule structures.
	Disorders caused by excessive stress on the musculoskeletal system.
	Capsule-ligament insufficiency.
Ankle	Therapeutic rehabilitation: benign sprain trauma with local swelling phenomena, without anatomical lesions of the ligaments.
	Supportive or Louisiana type: for preventive purposes, before any competition or training in the presence of risk factors.
Knee	Medial/lateral unloading: tears, strains of the medial/lateral collateral ligament, lateral or medial meniscus tears.
	Patella corrective: proximal or distal patella apex syndrome, patellar chondropathy, patellar dislocation.
	ACL stabilizer (anterior cruciate ligament): elongation and/or partial or total tear of the anterior cruciate ligament before, in the latter case, surgery.
	Treatment of Osgood-Schlatter disease.
Achilles tendon	Insertional skeletal tendinopathy, retrocalcaneal bursitis, discharge after tenorrhaphy surgery (after removal of the plaster cast), tendinitis or tendinosis.
Shoulder	Acromon-claveal sprains and sub-dislocations, scapulo-humeral periarthritis.
Elbow	Epicondylitis (tennis elbow) and epithrocleitis (golfer's elbow).
Wrist	Sprains, bruises, tears of the ulnar and/or radial ligaments, infractions of the carpal bones and inflammation of the carpal joint.
Vertebral column	Functional scoliosis, acute low back pain.