Treatments
The Rib Injury Clinic is able to offer expert opinion on all forms of chest wall and sternal problems. The treatment options discussed will depend on the type and severity of the chest wall problem. Other important considerations will be age, other associated musculoskeletal or cardiopulmonary problems and any other medical issues. In many cases, treatment may involve more than one option.
Pain management
Along with advice around physical activity pain management is an important part of the treatment of rib or sternal injuries. From simple painkillers to more sophisticated pain management regimes including using regional anaesthetic blocks or long-term neuropathic painkillers, appropriate expert advice is important.
Physical therapy & rehabilitation
The focus of physical therapy following rib or sternal injury is maintenance of breathing and following a period of rest, a build-up of physical activity. The target of physical therapy depends on the injury but includes specific strength exercises, maintaining and improving core strength and appropriate gentle stretching.
Trigger point injections
Trigger point injection (TPI) and other radiological guided injections to injury sites can be used to both help diagnosis as well as treat a rib or sternal injury, but in this part of the body requires a chest specialist. It can be used to treat a painful muscle (TPI), fracture sites or more complex chest wall ‘junctional’ injuries such as costosternal or costochondral injuries.
Surgery
Surgery remains an important option in treating rib, sternal or more complex chest wall injuries. The focus may be pain relief, or reconstruction of an abnormal area to its normal anatomy. Several types of operation are available and it's important that your surgeon is familiar with the different surgical options so that the type and severity of the chest wall problem can be treated with the best approach safely and effectively.