hi I'm dr. Paul Spanky from Foot and Ankle associates of North Texas and grapevine in Keller Texas and today we'll be discussing in the proper ways you can ice an extremity after a surgery and injury there's there different types of things you can ice with my favorite is these old gel packs the reason why I like these is because you can throw em in the freezer they freeze up pretty quickly and they only they only last for like 30 minutes you never really want to ice for more than 30 minutes you can actually cause frostbite some other options are taking ice from the fridge putting that in a bag or taking frozen peas which is a real popular one you just don't want to serve those to your friends or guests once you're done with them whether when you ever use something like this it's always very important that you never put a gel pack or ice directly on the skin and the ways you can prevent that are pretty simple you know in the case of most foot surgeries we're putting the ice pack directly on the side of the injury or behind me or around the ankle I'm going to do that switching with a pack like this you want to wrap it in something via a towel I find that a real easy way to do that is everybody has these grocery bags that you know local vendors give you or let you pick up that you know fare or something like that but these have just a thin enough material that you've an ice pack in there after it's been cooled down and put against the skin you're not going to give yourself frostbite but whenever you apply the ice it's always just for about 30 minutes the most you would really apply that as 30 minutes every hour especially after surgery that's a good way to prevent it from swelling which will cause a lot of the pain but you would never do this no fewer than three times a day after surgery now when we do a surgery I just have my shoe on here but we'll have a dressing on the foot that dressing typically is pretty large so when you for an ice pack on and you may not feel that cold come through you can always attempt that if that works great but if you don't feel the cold coming through we kind of go to our next options which the first one is on the inside the ankle here the arteries and the veins come to this area so people an ice pack there for 30 minutes that will reduce the swelling in the post-operative pain often we have a cast on or even higher dressing and you're not going to get that goal to come through so you put that ice pack right behind the knee or most of the vessels arm that will reduce the swelling one of the most important thing to do ice is you never ice the extremity would get extremity dangling down towards the floor you always want to elevate that and the chair I'm in now I can like high enough but you want that that leg higher than your waist so that the gravity is actually bringing the blood back to your core and not down your foot as you ice your foot you know if you were having your tastes of the skin obvious you should call your physician and usually that's gonna be firmly standing leading the ice on too long but again these ice packs are great because when you use these they just they cool down actually become warm where you're not going to burn the skin and that is the proper way to ice a leg after a surgery you