It goes without saying that our foot and ankle joints are crucial to helping us move from point A to point B, making them essential to the quality of our day-to-day lives. And yet, these joints are very complex and intricate – there are many bones, ligaments, muscles and tendons in a compact area, which makes this area particularly vulnerable to injury.
The foot and ankle joint may be susceptible to a number of different types of injuries. Overuse injuries include stress fractures and tendon swelling, which can be debilitating in nature if not treated well.
Most commonly, ankle injuries such as ligament sprains and tears are often acute in nature. It doesn’t have to be a traumatic injury, as you would often see in sports injuries. Something as simple as walking on an uneven footpath can cause a rolled ankle, resulting in an ankle sprain.
If you’re experiencing any kind of pain or discomfort in your ankle joints, a2z Health Group can provide personalised ankle pain treatment and management services at our Noble Park or Dandenong clinics.
Physiotherapy treatment goals for ankle pain: Injury Protection, Pain Relief & Control Inflammation; Regain Full Range of Motion; Strengthen your Ankle and Calf Muscles; Sport-Specific Skills; Graduated Return to Training and Return to Competition.
Our physiotherapists are industry experts, with a wealth of experience in the assessment and diagnosis of ankle sprains. Your history and a thorough clinical examination will determine the severity of your ankle condition. We’ll look at your movements, strength of your muscles and tendons, and the strength of your ligaments. We will also go into in-depth detail regarding how your ankle and foot injury can affect the rest of your leg/body.
If required, you may be referred for an X-ray, CT scan or MRI to confirm or exclude specific ligament or bone injuries. This helps us to provide more specialised ankle pain treatment and management at either of our two clinics in Dandenong and Noble Park. With accurate assessment and early treatment, most ankle and foot injuries respond extremely well to physiotherapy, allowing you to quickly resume pain-free and normal activities of daily living.
We tailor our Dandenong and Noble Park ankle pain treatments to each individual we work with. To arrange an initial consultation with our fully qualified and highly experienced physiotherapists, don’t hesitate to book an appointment online. We also provide treatment for back pain, neck pain, whiplash, sciatica and other musculoskeletal conditions.
A Physiotherapy session involves our Physiotherapist taking you through a thorough professional physical assessment followed by a diagnosis of your specific problem. Physiotherapists help you understand what causes the problems and related injuries as part of our educational approach to integrating the treatment with your lifestyle. This is then followed by a variety of treatment techniques and exercises to assist your return to mobility and full function.
The average physiotherapy session varies from 20 – 30 minutes, with most patients receiving a structured series of exercise and stretches to do at home to complement their treatment in our physiotherapy clinic. All our treatments are one-on-one in private treatment rooms – we never see more than one patient at a time. You do not need a Doctor’s referral to see our Physiotherapists and health funds will pay a rebate for part of the cost of your physio consultation.
Our Physiotherapists use the latest hands-on techniques such as joint mobilisation, manipulation, stretching, taping, soft tissue techniques and dry needling to assist in pain management and injury recovery. We also focus on personalised exercise programs involving biomechanical analysis, specific muscle activation, strengthening and conditioning exercises, balance and proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation, postural correction, and core stability training to assist in the restoration of the physical function, injury rehabilitation and performance of the body.
Physiotherapists are experts in the prevention of all kinds of injury, particularly sports injuries. We work with health club practitioners and provide advice or complement training techniques in preventing injury. Our physiotherapists will discuss any important lifestyle factors such as training programs, sporting goals, workstation setups and postural correction to help prevent problems from recurring or better still, from happening in the first place. In many cases there is more than one cause of your pain, especially if it is a chronic or recurring problem.
Whether you have injured yourself while working out in the health club, doing normal activities at home, at work or on the sporting field, our Physiotherapists will help you recover in a speedy, complicated-free treatment to get you back to your normal activities. Physiotherapists focus on the assessment, maintenance and restoration of the physical function and performance of the body and minimise your chance of re-injury. Getting you back to your fitness regime quickly is what Physiotherapists aim for.
At your initial visit your physiotherapist will perform a thorough physical assessment enabling them to diagnose your condition. Once your condition has been diagnosed your physiotherapist will then explain it to you and specific treatment will be recommended and commenced to help solve your problem. This process is likely to take around 40 minutes.
A Doctor’s referral is welcome but not necessary if you are attending one of our clinics as a private patient. You do however require a referral from your Doctor if your problem is related to a motor vehicle accident, or if you are a Veterans’ Affairs patient.
You do not need a Doctor’s referral if your problem is related to a workplace injury. However, your first medical certificate will need to come from your Doctor.
If you are in a Private health Insurance Fund and are covered for Ancillary Cover or “extras’’ then you will be eligible to receive a rebate. Currently there is only limited funding for treatment of chronic conditions via Medicare.
At our clinics we use an electronic payments and claiming system called HICAP’s. This system allows you to automatically claim your rebate from your Health Fund immediately following your treatment. All you need is to present your Health Fund Card to one of our receptionists who instantly process your claim. Once this is completed all you are required to do is pay the ‘gap amount’ (the difference between the treatment fee and the rebate you received from the Health Fund). This can be paid with cash, cheque, credit card or EFTPOS.
There are some provisions for limited physiotherapy costs to be covered under Medicare. To qualify for this you must be suffering from a condition that has been present, or is likely to be present for at least 6 months and your GP must be currently using a personally managed EPC (Enhanced Primary Care) multidisciplinary plan. If you meet these two criteria then this may enable you to receive up to 5 Medicare funded treatments per year. To find out all necessary details ask your GP or contact us for more information.
1/82 Stud Road
Dandenong VIC 3175
128 Chandler Rd, Noble Park VIC 3174, Australia
