Host: What is sprain?
Dr. David Geier: Sprain is an injury to a joint, as opposed to a strain which is an injury to a muscle where you stretch the muscle out. A sprain in someway injures the joint. You turn, say your ankle, you turn it a certain way and stretch the ligaments, or tear the ligaments that hold the joint together.
There are various severities to that. Albeit, it can just be a minor stretch to the capsule of ligaments that usually take a few days to get over, all the way from complete tears that even sometimes can require surgery. But again, it's an injury to the knee, the ankle, less commonly the shoulder, elbow, that type of thing.
Host: How are sprains treated?
Dr. David Geier: Most of the time it's fairly mild, so it's s matter of rest. Getting off of it and avoiding any activity that causes any kind of worsening of that symptom. So, say like an ankle sprain, where you rolled your ankle and now hurt the outside of your ankle, it might be as simple as avoiding that sport or activity for a day or two, maybe as much as completely staying off of it with crutches.
It depends really on what type of joint and how unstable that joint is after the sprain, if it's very loose and doesn't hold up the body or things like that, you're going to be more aggressive with it than say just, sprain that causes pain and discomfort and limits activity.
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