The Right Rehab Means Surgical Success EVEN WHEN SURGERY goes perfectly, ath-
letes will never get back to competing the way they want to if their joints stay stiff and their muscles remain weak after injury and inactivity, says James E. Tibone, co-director of the USC Center for Sports Medicine and medical director for USC’s Athletic Department. That’s why patients and physicians rely on their physical therapy partners. At USC Physical Therapy Associates, faculty from the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy assess each patient after surgery and design a rehabilitation program tailored to patients’ sports injuries and goals. “After taking a whole-body perspective, we focus on form and technique, trying to figure out what caused the injury and correcting it so that they don’t reinjure themselves,” says Jonathan Sum ’01, DPT ’05, instructor of clinical physical therapy and
director of the faculty practice. “Then we work on specific exercises related to their surgery.” Besides traditional techniques for stretching muscles and ligaments and increasing joints’ range of motion, physical therapists offer innovative techniques such as biofeedback to retrain tendons that surgeons take from one part of the body and transfer to another to repair injury. They also have helpful technology, such as machines that measure muscles’ power output and a gravity-fighting treadmill that enables patients to exercise injured joints and muscles with less stress from body weight. The physical therapists see most postsurgical patients on the Health Sciences Campus, but also see some sports medicine patients at a new clinic on the University Park Campus. ●
From the top: Seth Gamradt, George “Rick” Hatch, Reza Omid, James E. Tibone and C. Thomas Vangsness Jr.
Physical therapists like Jonathan Sum ’01, DPT ’05 design rehabilitation programs for recovery after surgery.