Author: Dr. AC Rothgerber

As a practicing orthopedic physical therapist, I see low back pain patients all the time and for a variety of reasons.  One of my favorite low back pain conditions to see is a lumbar strain, which is a tear of one or more of the low back muscles.  This is an injury that I see […]

  I am currently treating a patient who is having pain in her left knee.  She has a lot of pain below the kneecap but also pain along the IT band.  After examining her, she doesn’t just have one thing going on.  She has several.  Her kneecap is not tracking correctly because of her IT […]

This was a statement from a young athlete that wanted to put off an ACL reconstruction after a grade 3 ACL sprain (aka tear).  She wanted to play basketball in her senior year of high school.  If she had surgery, she would miss the season.  Her swelling had already decreased and she had good knee […]

A quadriceps tear (aka strain) is not as common as a hamstring tear, but they do occur.  The quadriceps are very large, powerful muscles and play an important role in sports and everyday activities.  I have treated several quadriceps injuries as an orthopedic physical therapist including my own.  I have strained my own quadriceps while […]

This was a statement from a collegiate volleyball player that I recently treated.  She was home for the summer and was a very familiar patient.  Our physical therapy clinic was where she would come for her knee pain when she was in high school.  She has had knee problems for years and was using the […]

I treat biceps tendinopathy everyday because I usually have at least one shoulder patient everyday.  The biceps is usually affected when there is a rotator cuff injury, surgery, labral tear, or other shoulder pathology.  Luckily I have a lot of success calming down the biceps tendon and addressing the underlying cause.   Read on to […]

This was a question from a young dancer that I helped rehab several years ago.  She had fallen out of a jump and sustained a partial PCL tear.  Lucky for her, the PCL can heal on its own.  The young dancer was back to her normal leaps and turns in about 6 weeks.  She had […]

Probably is the answer to the question above.  I cannot tell you how many rotator cuff tendinopathies I have treated since becoming a physical therapist.  It really must be hundreds.  It is a very common injury from all walks of life.  I have treated everyone from collegiate swimmers to 85 year olds for rotator cuff […]

I have had a string of patients with hip labral tears recently.    The one that I was thinking about is in her mid 50s and is a workout fiend.  She came to therapy looking for some hip labral tear exercises.  My patient walks 5 miles a day in less than an hour everyday.  Or […]

This was a question from a patient I had several years ago.  She had been sitting on hard bleachers for several hours over several days while her child competed in a high school band competition.  Afterwards, she had difficulty sitting for anymore than 15 to 20 minutes at a time and had sciatica-like pain down […]