hi my name is Jennifer wall I am a
student of physical therapy at the
University of Central Florida today I'm
going to go through and show you how to
apply a cold pack but today I have a
patient who is sad exposed to days and
acute ankle sprain I'm going to go
through and show you how to apply the
contraindications and so forth the
benefits of this for an acute ankle
sprain are that it should reduce
inflammation and edema it should
increase the range of motion and it
should decrease pain
so before we start I'm going to go ahead
and make sure that the patient is
cleared of all contraindications in
order to use the ice pack so first of
all have you ever had any circulation
issues have you recently had any nerve
injuries have you ever had your fingers
turned white or red or your toes after
using ice have you ever had blood in
your urine have you ever had an excess
amount of protein in your blood have you
ever had any buttock rashes form or
anything on your skin
okay and have you ever had any extreme
pain after eating ice okay now that I've
cleared the patient of all
contraindications I'm going to go ahead
and set her up and prepare her for using
the ice
now I'm going to make sure that the
patient is positioned properly I'm going
to make sure she has a pillow underneath
her head for comfort I'm going to make
sure she has a pillow underneath her
knee in order to support her leg and
then I'm also gonna have a pillow folded
twice underneath her ankle for support
in elevation and in order to actually do
lighting I'm going to be using a
cervical science gel pack it's about 40
degrees and I will be putting it on the
patient for about 15 minutes
before I actually apply it the jaw pack
I'm going to tell my patient what she's
going to be expecting so you said you've
used a gel pack before um I just want to
let you know what you're going to be
expecting to feel so it's gonna feel
cold first it's gonna feel like it's
burning and you're gonna feel a little
bit of aching some decreased pain and
then finally it's gonna turn out okay
before we do that though I'm gonna check
your sensation in the area so I'm gonna
test this by touching her foot she is
gonna be looking up toward the ceiling
so that she can't see the area and she's
gonna indicate when she can feel the
touch so please tell me when you feel it
okay so since she does have sensation in
the area I'm going to apply the cold
pack what I've done is I wrapped it in
one layer of the pillowcase I'm going to
put first some insulation I'm gonna put
that down on the top of her ankle I'm
gonna lift her ankle up so that it wraps
underneath and because of her body
weight I'm going to just leave it there
because it's holding it down if for some
reason she needed she wasn't able to
have it held there I'm use a rack or
something to hold it in place I'm going
to leave her for 15 minutes but I will
come back and check on her about every
five minutes just to make sure that
there's no redness in the area and that
everything feels okay
so now it's been 15 minutes and she's
left the ice on I did check back on her
every five minutes and each time she
said she had no tingling no numbness etc
so what I am gonna go ahead and do now
is remove the ice pack from her ankle
and when I do this I or what I was
checking back on her she had normal
blood pressure she had no numbness no
tingling so the precautions for that all
seemed okay from this I would expect to
see her having increased range of motion
decreased pain and decreased
inflammation in the area