Muscle strain is one of the most common injuries in sports, according to the Beijing Institute of Sports Medicine, this injury accounts for about 25% or more of the incidence of various injuries, while thigh muscle strain accounts for about 3%.
Muscle strains can occur in the muscle belly and muscle belly division, but also in the tendon attached to the bone. The strain may be a subtle injury, or a partial tear of the muscle fiber, or even a complete rupture. Sometimes, in addition to the injury to the muscle tissue itself, the auxiliary tissues surrounding the muscle, such as fascia and tendon sheath, are often injured.
Thigh muscle strains are divided into subtle muscle fiber injuries, partial lacerations and complete ruptures, the former recovering relatively quickly, with less impact on sports training and faster recovery; the latter two are more serious injuries, with longer recovery time for treatment. Complete ruptures are best treated surgically. Muscle strains are generally characterized by pain, local swelling, muscle tension or twitching, with obvious pressure pain, and more pain when the injured muscle is actively contracted or passively stretched. In severe muscle strains, when the muscle fibers are broken, the injured person himself often feels or hears the sound of the break, followed by local swelling, subcutaneous bleeding, impaired movement of the limb, and the depression or abnormal expansion at the ends of the break is felt.
Since 2003, we have treated 75 patients with thigh muscle strain, all of whom were excluded from complete thigh muscle rupture, and used silver needle therapy to achieve satisfactory results, which are reported as follows.
1.Data and methods
1.1 General information: this group statistics 75 cases, 43 male, 32 female, age 4-37 years old, average 21 years, the duration of the disease 1 day-12 years, average 3 years, 21 cases of acute strain, 54 cases of old injury, all athletes, gymnasts 11 cases; soccer players 17 cases; basketball players 13 cases; track and field athletes 33 cases; bowling players 1 case.
1.2 Symptoms and signs: 33 cases of anterior thigh group muscle injury; 10 cases of left leg; 23 cases of right leg; 42 cases of posterior thigh group muscle injury (20 cases of left leg and 22 cases of right leg).
1.3 Lesion site: 43 cases of posterior group of thigh muscles; 32 cases of anterior group of thigh muscles (19 cases of rectus femoris, 4 cases of long retractor muscles, 5 cases of broad fascial tensor muscles, and 4 cases of medial head strain of quadriceps.
1.4 Imaging DR or DRI examination: all cases were examined by DR, excluding fractures and other case changes, 15 cases were examined by MRI, 11 cases had partial tears of tendons and muscles, including 7 cases of biceps femoris injury, 4 cases of rectus femoris, and the remaining 4 cases only saw congestion and edema of the injured part (2 cases of broad fascial tensor; 2 cases of longissimus muscle).
1.5 Treatment methods
1.5.1 Needle selection: According to different parts and different muscle thickness, 12CM or 15CM long silver needles were selected, and the silver needles were autoclaved before use, and needling was performed according to aseptic operation.
1.5.2 Operation method: after determining the lesion site, if in the front of the thigh then use the supine position, in the back of the thigh then use the prone position, local exposure, gentian violet spotting, after routine disinfection, lay sterile cave towel, take 2% lidocaine surface anesthesia, select the appropriate length of silver needles for direct pricking, oblique pricking straight to the bone surface, silver needle shank end with 2CM × 1.5CM moxibustion a column, wait for the moxa fire to burn out and pull out the needle, needle eye Disinfection, hemostatic patch to seal the eye of the needle, rest for 15 minutes can be.
1.5.3 Needle distribution method: longitudinal distribution of needles along the direction of injury muscle travel, the needle distance is 1.0C1.5CM, each line is about 10-15 needles, according to the size of the injury site 3-8 lines of needle distribution, to include all the injury area.
1.5.4 Number of treatments: 57 cases were treated once, 15 cases were treated twice, and 3 cases were treated three times at the same lesion site. The interval between needling at the same site was 15 days, and the interval between needling at different sites was 7 days. Non-injury exercise was started from the third postoperative day, and the injury training was gradually resumed after one week and normal training after two weeks.
1.6 Efficacy standards are divided into three levels: (1) cure: symptoms completely disappeared, restore normal function without recurrence, no sequelae; (2) effective: symptoms disappeared, resume sports training, but the amount of exercise or exertion when the injured part yo have soreness and discomfort; (3) invalid: symptoms as before, can not participate in normal training.
2.Results
51 cases were cured, accounting for 68%; 24 cases were effective, accounting for 32%; and zero were invalid. The total effective rate was 100%.
3.Discussion
Athlete thigh muscle strain is a relatively common disease in athletes’ injuries, often occurring when warm-up preparation activities are insufficient, the body is too fatigued, training with injury or near the game before the large intensity, large volume of exercise. Currently, the commonly used RICE therapy, i.e., rest, ice, denture dressing, elevation of the affected limb and other physical therapies take a long time to recover, and the athletes’ physical performance is greatly affected.
Traditional Chinese medicine uses internal and external application of Chinese herbs, proper immobilization and braking, which also takes a period of time to begin to resume sports, both of which seriously affect the continuity of training and have the potential to cause serious sequelae. Injured muscle fibers proliferate to form inflammatory adhesions, inflammatory tissue contractures degenerate and lose elasticity, and striated changes occur, making the original division and structure change, thus making the muscle unable to work properly. The pain is persistent, the power balance is disrupted, and the injury is easily re-injured and can spread to adjacent joints. Silver needle can eliminate the muscle strict inflammatory state, improve the blood circulation of the injured part, effectively prevent muscle adhesion and spasm, so that the injury quickly recover.
Therefore, silver needle treatment for athletes with thigh muscle strain has the characteristics of good efficacy, short course of treatment and few sequelae, and is worth promoting.
Silver needle treatment of athletes thigh muscle strain has the characteristics of good efficacy, short course of treatment and few sequelae, it is observed that: using silver needle treatment, acute injury efficacy is better than chronic injury; simple strain is better than compound injury; moxibustion treatment is better than traditional fixed treatment. Due to the thigh muscle hypertrophy, the location of the injury is deep, the traditional Chinese medicine internal, external, injured limb fixation is often long, the recovery period began to exercise there is obvious pain, and the muscle is easy to form inflammatory adhesions, more sequelae.
Injured tissue fibrous hyperplasia, inflammatory tissue degeneration and contracture, muscle striated changes, pain persistent, the body dynamic balance is disrupted, the body to re-maintain balance and regulation, must correspond to compensate, series of compensatory regulation, causing lumbar, knee, ankle pain, contralateral leg burden increased, thus causing protective strain or injury.
3.1 Introduction of silver needle therapy: silver needle therapy is developed from the ancient “nine needles” in the lifting needle and long needle, in the 1970s, the founder of Shanghai soft tissue surgery, Professor Xuan jingren use intensive silver needle therapy to treat severe neck, shoulder, back and leg pain, and achieved unexpected results. It had both a good analgesic effect and a good therapeutic effect. More surprisingly, it was found that all the areas pricked by the needles produced a lasting muscle relaxation effect, that is, people have difficulty in dealing with the pain-induced muscle spasm phenomenon was released.
3.2 silver needle therapy of three effects: (1) eliminate inflammatory response; (2) increase local blood supply; (3) on the release of muscle spasm has other therapeutic effects difficult to achieve. At present, silver needles in the treatment of sports injuries is still relatively small, need further in-depth research.
3.3 silver needle production specifications and characteristics.
Production specifications: silver needles with 85% silver mixed with copper, nickel, chromium alloy melting, by the extraction of wire segmentation, needle thickness of about 1MM, needle handle with fine silver wire for tight spiral winding, needle end pointed but not sharp, the end of the needle welded into a small round ball. Needle shank length is 5-6CM, needle body length is divided into 6.8.10.12.15CM and other five specifications, suitable for various parts of the human body, according to the degree of muscle thickness, needle direction and through the muscle depth selected different specifications of the silver needle.
3.4 Treatment characteristics.
(1) Silver needles are mainly needled at the site of injury, which is deeper and more extensive and intensive than ordinary acupuncture sites.
(2) Needle body is more out. The diameter is 1MM, and no needle breakage or stagnation will occur due to transitional muscle contraction.