The Power of Blood Flow Restriction Therapy
Sriya s -
This week, I started amassing sources for use in my research project. By utilizing various different search terms on the databases EBSCO and JSTOR, I was able to compile around 100 sources that successfully underwent title screening. Some of the search terms I used included “total knee replacement”, “total knee arthroplasty”, “blood flow restriction therapy”, “occlusion training”, “blood flow restriction training”, and “vascular occlusion”. I organized these sources in an excel sheet, a screenshot of which can be seen below.
Additionally, I was able to witness firsthand the power of blood flow restriction therapy (BFRT) at my internship. BFRT cuffs are made of comfortable fabrics, but are progressively tightened around the limb they are attached to in order to restrict flow of oxygenated blood to the muscles. I learned that every person has their own “comfortable” level of compression, which mostly depends on physical characteristics like age and strength. A nine-year old receiving therapy for a broken ankle and the track athlete coming in for recovery following a tear in their ankle’s Achilles tendon are administered BFRT in the same location, but with wildly different levels of compression (the athlete likely has resistance added as well!). I definitely agree with my sources, based on my clinical experience, regarding BFRT’s benefits for patients lacking the ability to perform high-resistance exercise. This week, I worked a lot with a young ankle patient, who wasn’t allowed extensive use of high-resistance exercises like the leg press due to their age. BFRT allowed them a challenging therapy experience, but without the physical strain weighted exercises provide. BFRT is no joke, for sure! I tried an exercise with the cuffs at a fairly high compression level, and the added difficulty was quite noticeable.
Over the course of the next week, I aim to continue amassing at least 100 more sources for my research project that undergo title screening. I plan to look mostly at the databases PubMed and Google Scholar, and retrace EBSCO and JSTOR to find any sources that may have been missed on my initial screening. I hope to soon be able to start screening the abstracts of sources I identified as promising based on titles, thereby proceeding to the next level of my systematic review and meta-analysis. Thank you!
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