Immediate Mechanotherapy to Improve Muscle Repair Post-Surgery or Rest?

Nearly every physiotherapy intervention in musculoskeletal rehabilitation introduces mechanical forces, i.e. mechanotherapy, regardless of whether the forces are generated extrinsically via therapist intervention (eg, during joint or tissue mobilization or via the introduction of external therapeutic modalities) or intrinsically within the individual themselves via the prescription of exercise therapy.

Mechanotherapy to injured tissues may double the rate of muscle regeneration and reduce tissue scarring over the course of two weeks. But how? It turns out that comparing treated and non-treated muscles in mice there was a reduction in cytokines, which in turn means a decrease in infiltration of neutrophils, in the treated muscles. Mechanotherapy literally flushes them out. The initial presence of neutrophils actually helps to stimulate the growth of new muscle cells however, prolonged presence may impair the production of muscle cells. Therefore, by speeding up the inflammatory process using mechanotherapy the regenerative process quickly runs its full course. Furthermore, the muscle fibre type is influenced. In the mechanotherapy treated muscles the fibre types were predominantly type IIX whereas type IIA were more prevalent in untreated muscles. This means that treated muscles were made of larger fibres and capable of greater force production. Using just soft tissue therapy alone there may be a 24.7% improvement in limb function alongside a 61.1% in pain (Kushartanti et al. 2019). Indeed the efficacy of some surgical procedures may even depend on the type of postoperative management including physiotherapy (Dowgieda et al. 2020).

References:

Massage helps injured muscles heal faster and stronger – Harvard Gazette