What Are Soft Tissue Injuries? – Types of Soft Tissue Injuries

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Soft tissue injuries could be defined as any kind of trauma to any muscle ligament and tendon or skin in the body of a human being. These cannot be qualified as fractures because fractures are those injuries that are related to hard tissues also these cannot be classified as injuries to internal organs. Today, we will be learning about everything that is important about soft tissue injuries. It is important to have an understanding of soft tissue injuries to be sure that you will be taking the right course of action in the case of an emergency. So, let’s begin with the classification of different types of soft tissue injuries

Types of Soft Tissue Injuries

The most common soft tissue injuries are contusions, abrasions, avulsions, and lacerations. These injuries namely abrasions, avulsions, and lacerations are those types of soft tissue injuries that could be classified as open soft tissue injuries. Open soft tissue injuries are those injuries that lead to tissue separation and excessive loss of blood.

Contusions, on the other hand, are those injuries that do not have open wounds. That being said, these injuries do not bleed openly but the bleeding is trapped within the tissues which can often lead to swelling and excessive pressure on several other blood vessels. These in turn also reduces blood flow to tissues around the injury.

Sprains could be classified as an acute traumatic injury and it comes from leverage on the tissues and not from a blow to the tissues. Tendinitis and strains are also called overuse injuries.

Symptoms and Signs of Acute Traumatic Soft Tissue Injury

• Sprains at the different joints of the body and those sprains visibly look like contusions with bruising and swelling but are not contusions as there is no direct force trauma.
• Contusions are open clear because of the swelling and the formation of discoloration.
• Avulsions can be caused by excessive hit or blow on the body that leads to dislocation of chunks of skin and also muscle.
• Abrasions are those that only affect the layer of your skin. Prime examples of this type of injury are fire burns and friction burns.
• Lacerations are very easy to identify and have jacked uneven edges along with the wound being open to the layers of soft tissue underneath the skin surface.

Symptoms and signs of overuse soft tissue injuries

Unlike acute traumatic soft tissue injuries, identifying overuse injuries is very difficult as they can happen all over your body, and effectively pointing out different sets of symptoms and signs is a difficult task. But here are a few things that you can look for:

• Bruising
• Swelling
• Snapping or popping feelings
• Limited range of motion
• Pain