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Scar Tissue Massage And Management Therapy

Most of the time, soft tissue injuries result in scarring or scar tissue in our

• muscles
• tendons
• ligaments
  
• nerves
• skin

Scars occur and formed to replace normal tissues that had been damaged by injuries and/or trauma. Most of us think that scars "only happen" at the skin level because those scars are easy to see (pregnancy scars, post-surgery scars, post-injury scars etc), but we can also develop scars deeper inside, and it's these deeper scars that cause more problems.

They're called adhesions and scar tissues, and it's a common problem that many of our patients face. If you're one of our patients or am thinking to seek physiotherapy or hand therapy treatment with us, our senior physios and hand therapists will also assess to determine if scar adhesions are one of the factors that cause you pain or limit your movements.

They will perform indepth assessment to understand and diagnose your condition and injuries, to establish which structures are damaged, how severe the condition is, facilitate guide and help you heal to 100%. If it's an external (skin) scarring, we can also help deal with it as well.

Scar Tissue massage and management Physiotherapy

There are a few types of scarring / scar tissues:

• Atrophic Scars - refers to scars that are mature, and tend to "sink" into the skin. Sometimes they look like a depression on the skin. They are typically associated with acne scars or with wounds where skin or muscle has been removed.
  
  
• Hypertrophic Scars - these are the most "normal-looking" scars. They start off as being red or purple colored, and located slightly higher than non-injured skin. Generally fade and flatten over time.
  
  
• Contracture Scars - these scars form especially with post-burn injuries, and they often look like they're a mix of stretch, sticky, thick scarring.
  
  
• Keloid Scars - are often the thickest types of scars that can look angry, swollen and red. They tend to happen when there's too much collagen produced in the scar formation, and it's often genetic in nature
  
  
• Stretch Scars - are scars that arise from weight gain, weight loss, pregnanc

Scar Tissue Physiotherapy

Scarring or scar tissue is the formation of weak scar tissues at the injury site, and they are caused/form in 2 basic but different ways:

1. When a muscle, tendon or ligament is torn partially or damaged, the body will "fix-glue" the parts together using scar tissues (to create stability)
   
   
2. More commonly for scars to form is when soft tissues do not receive enough oxygen supply (hypoxia), dies and becomes scar tissue
   

Both of these can occur to due to direct trauma or injuries or by small, repetitive traumas such as:

• poor, awkward postures
• repetitive strains such as carrying heavy load over time or using typing heavily

these damages be it occurring immediately or slowly over time, causes muscle tensions that decreases blood supply. And that in turn decreases nutrition and oxygen, leading to hypoxia that starts the scar formation process.

Scar Tissue Physiotherapy

Scar tissue massage and management is a specialist management expertise especially by our senior hand therapists. Once our senior therapists had assessed and diagnosed your scarring and condition, then we can provide specific scar massage and management therapies. Usually it's direct scar management techniques to break the scarring adhesion and to flatten the scar, and we may even refer you to supporting specialists such as

• doctors
• deep tissue release therapists
• etc
  

Our carefully selected senior therapists have seen hundreds if not thousands+ of patients, and many of them being soft tissue injuries so our senior physios and hand therapy specialists are well versed and experienced in managing scars and soft tissue injuries.