Sports Medicine Minute, RICE; Rest, Ice, Compression & Elevation - Jeffrey M. Klauser, MD

Video Transcript

RICE is a mnemonic that has been thrown around the sports medicine world for many, many years. It stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. That’s basically, a treatment modality that you apply when patients first initially get injured. Ice, compression and elevation is pretty helpful to help with any swelling, acute pain and it also minimizes the length it takes to get back to play. Rest is the number one thing, I like to hit on a lot with patients. It seems a little counterintuitive that you’re going to rest in order to get back to play but, you have to think, if you don’t rest a lot of injuries correctly that’s when you get into a lot of trouble. So, injuries like a hamstring strain or a calf tear, those can often be one or two week injuries, but if you don’t rest it adequately, you’re looking at five six weeks or sometimes even longer than that.