Is ultrasound therapy effective for pain relief?
According to the Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Journal “There was little evidence that active therapeutic ultrasound is more effective than placebo ultrasound for treating people with pain or a range of musculoskeletal injuries or for promoting soft tissue healing”
What happens during an ultrasound treatment?
While receiving an ultrasound treatment, you will most likely not feel anything happening, except perhaps a slight warming sensation or tingling around the treatment area. If the ultrasound sound head is left in place on your skin and not moved in a circular direction, you may experience pain.
Should I get an ultrasound before physical therapy?
If you are going to physical therapy and are getting an ultrasound, you should know that many studies have found that ultrasound offers little benefit to the overall outcome of physical therapy. For example, if you have low back pain, ultrasound treatments have been shown to offer very little benefit.
Is ultrasound effective for sports-related tendon injuries?
DOI: 10.1097/PHM.0b013e31821a70be Abstract Ultrasound is a therapeutic agent commonly used to treat sports-related musculoskeletal conditions, including tendon injuries or tendinopathy. Despite the widespread popularity of therapeutic ultrasound, few clinical studies have proved its efficacy.
Can ultrasound cause burning sensation?
But, exposure to low-intensity ultrasound for a long time may cause superficial burns on the skin. So, medical practitioners usually ensure that the ultrasound probe is in motion when in contact with your skin.
Can ultrasound treatments cause pain?
It has the potential to produce harm if the heat is left in the same place too long. If, while being treated, you feel discomfort, alert your PT right away. One potential risk with therapeutic ultrasound is that the rapid pressure changes during cavitation could cause a “microplosion” and damage cellular activity.
Can ultrasound aggravate an injury?
There is evidence that thermal doses of ultrasound in DOMS can aggravate pain and stiffness [52].
How does ultrasound therapy affect wound healing?
Two large meta-analyses also suggest ultrasound has a positive impact on wound size. Pooled results presented by Driver et al21 suggest an average of 85.2% wound area reduction over an average of 7 weeks, 79.7% wound volume reduction over 12 weeks, and an average time to heal of 9.2 weeks.
Can ultrasound break up inflammation?
What is ultrasound therapy? Ultrasound therapy, also referred to as therapeutic ultrasound, is a treatment used in physiotherapy to help reduce inflammation in an injured area, increase blood flow, reduce muscle and connective tissue stiffness, and help to break down scar tissue.
How does ultrasound break down scar tissue?
The waves generated by ultrasound cause tiny vibrations in the cells of the soft tissues. These micro-vibrations affect the fibers that form scar tissue. Over time, ultrasound used in this method can prevent scar tissue from forming and may be able to break scar tissue down.
Does ultrasound speed healing?
Introduction. Therapeutic ultrasound is utilized by physical therapists to deliver a high frequency mechanical vibration to facilitate healing at a cellular level. Therapeutic ultrasound is often used by physiotherapists to reduce pain, increase circulation and increase mobility of soft tissues.
Does an ultrasound show nerve damage?
Ultrasound can be very useful in the diagnosis of peripheral nerve lesions because it provides a dynamic image and it can be used to trace a nerve's course towards the site of the suspected lesion.
How does ultrasound heal muscle?
Ultrasound can help relax tight muscles that are sore, and warms muscles and soft tissues, which increases circulation that helps healing. Ultrasound can help relax tight muscles that are sore, and warms muscles and soft tissues, which increases circulation that helps healing.
Can you see scar tissue on ultrasound?
Ultrasound allows imaging of minimal scar formation, early detection of myositis ossificans and cysts, and dynamic evaluation of small muscle hernias.
Can ultrasound be used over open wounds?
Sound waves could speed up the healing of open wounds.
Can you use ultrasound on an open wound?
It is indicated for wound cleaning and maintenance debridement of wounds containing yellow slough, fibrin, tissue exudate, or bacteria. Although therapeutic ultrasound has been used clinically to enhance healing of chronic wounds, no consensus exists regarding its effectiveness.
Can ultrasound cause nerve damage?
After more than a decade of ultrasound imaging in regional analgesia and pain medicine interventions, there have been no major reports of harm secondary to its use.
How often should you use ultrasound therapy?
According to Rosenzweig, “Therapists use ultrasound anywhere from six to 12 sessions – it's part of the patient's therapy, so therapists might do it for five minutes, then perhaps twice a week anywhere from thee weeks to six weeks.
What does ultrasound do for muscles?
The sound waves, or ultrasound rays, penetrate within the body generating heat increasing blood flow, and relaxing muscles and connective tissues thereby reducing pain and muscle spasms. The stimulation of these tissues in this way encourages repair and can greatly reduce the healing time of certain injuries.
Does ultrasound help heal ligaments?
Background: Ruptured medial collateral ligaments are capable of healing over time, but biomechanical and biochemical properties remain inferior to normal tissue. Low-intensity ultrasound may improve healing. Hypothesis: Medial collateral ligaments treated with ultrasound will demonstrate superior healing.
What is the purpose of ultrasound for pelvic pain?
Diagnostic ultrasounds may be used to determine the cause of pelvic pain, to diagnose tumors causing pain or to examine other structural abnormalities that may cause certain types of chronic pain.
Where do you get an ultrasound?
If she is looking for the cause of your pain, you will probably receive a diagnostic ultrasound. This may take place in the office, at a clinic or in a hospital, depending on what kind of detail is needed.
What is thermal ultrasound?
This type of ultrasound therapy is like applying a very deep heat: It penetrates the deep tissues, warming them up to encourage the healing of soft tissues. A physical therapist might use thermal ultrasound to treat a strained muscle that has not healed as expected.
What is diagnostic ultrasound?
Diagnostic ultrasounds use high-frequency sound waves that bounce around, providing a picture of specific areas in the body. If you think of the type of ultrasound used in pregnancy, you are picturing something pretty close to a diagnostic ultrasound for chronic pain. Diagnostic ultrasounds may be used to determine the cause of pelvic pain, ...
Why do you need a mechanical ultrasound?
A mechanical ultrasound causes tiny vibrations in the soft tissue, which can decrease swelling and inflammation in order to reduce some types of pain. Mechanical ultrasound, like thermal ultrasound, also promotes soft tissue healing. A physical therapist might use mechanical ultrasound to break up deep scar tissues in the muscles or ligaments. Mechanical ultrasound is often recommended for conditions in which there is a build-up of scar tissue (fibrosis).
Does ultrasound help with chronic pain?
Ultrasound for Chronic Pain. Ultrasound therapy does not work on all chronic pain conditions. It may be helpful for those with arthritis, myofascial pain, pain caused by fibrosis (scar tissue), strains and sprains, and bursitis.
Does thermal ultrasound help with arthritis?
Thermal ultrasound may be helpful with symptoms related to strains and sprains. A 2017 study looking specifically at the role of therapeutic ultrasound in knee arthritis found that it did reduce pain (especially at night) and improve function for a period of time but did not help substantially in the long-term control of pain.
When was ultrasound first used in physical therapy?
Physical Therapy. Unfocused beams of ultrasound for physical therapy were the first clinical application, dating to the 1950s , which often has been referred to simply as “therapeutic ultrasound” (Robertson and Baker, 2001). This modality now typically has a base unit for generating an electrical signal and a hand-held transducer.
What frequency is ultrasound used for?
Low power ultrasound of about 1 MHz fre quency has been widely applied since the 1950s for physical therapy in conditions such as tendinitis or bursitis.
What is ultrasound heating?
Ultrasound-induced heating is the result of the absorption of ultrasonic energy in biological tissue. For diagnostic ultrasound, temperature elevations and the potential for bioeffects are kept relatively low or negligible (Fowlkes et al. 2008) by carefully described indications for use, applying the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) principal, limited temporal average intensities, and generally short exposure durations. Therapeutic applications of ultrasonic heating therefore either utilize longer durations of heating with unfocused beams, or utilize higher intensity (than diagnostic) focused ultrasound. The use of unfocused heating, for example in physical therapy to treat highly absorbing tissues such as bone or tendon, can be moderated to produce enhanced healing without injury. Alternatively, the heat can be concentrated by focused beams until tissue is coagulated for the purpose of tissue ablation. Ultrasound heating which can lead to irreversible tissue changes follows an inverse time-temperature relationship. Depending on the temperature gradients, the effects from ultrasound exposure can include mild heating, coagulative necrosis, tissue vaporization, or all three.
What is a high intensity focused ultrasound?
High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU, or HIFUS) was initially studied clinically for thermal ablation of inoperable brain tissue for Par kinson’s disease (Fry et al. 1954; Kennedy et al 2003). In a HIFU system, a signal generator is connected to a focusing transducer, which produces very high local intensities of >1 kW/cm2of 0.5–7 MHz ultrasound at the focal spot. The lesion produced in tissue typically may be a few mm in diameter and in length. The position of this spot must be carefully controlled and moved in order to ablate larger volumes of tissue. This method is approved by the FDA in the USA for treating uterine fibroids (Tempany et al. 2003), cardiac ablation (Ninet et al. 2005), visceral soft tissue ablation (Klingler et al. 2008), and aesthetic treatment to lift the eyebrow (Gliklich et al. 2007; Alam et al. 2010). In addition, a method was developed and was approved for treatment of glaucoma using HIFU (Burgess et al. 1986).
What are the biological effects of ultrasound?
Other potential mechanisms for biological effects of ultrasound include the direct action of the compressional, tensile, and shear stresses. In addition, second-order phenomena, which depend on transmitted ultrasound energy, include radiation pressure, forces on particles and acoustic streaming.
How long does a flat transducer therapy last?
Therapy involves multiple treatments of 20 min each day by applying the large flat transducer to the site of injury and continuing treatment for periods of months. Although the process appears to be safe and effective, the therapy is slow and its use is predominantly limited to management of non-healing fractures.
What is ultrasonic energy used for?
The use of ultrasonic energy for therapy continues to expand, and approved applications now include uterine fibroid ablation, cataract removal (phacoemulsification), surgical tissue cutting and hemostasis, transdermal drug delivery, and bone fracture healing, among others.
What diagnosis or injuries benefit from ultrasound?
Most of the evidence today for US in hand therapy have mixed outcomes, but much of the research has shown that US is most beneficial for treating carpal tunnel, tendonitis, and scar remodeling.
What is ultrasound therapy?
US has been used in physical and occupational therapy to promote healing, decrease pain, reduce swelling, remodel scar tissue, and decrease inflammation.
How does ultrasound work?
Ultrasound works by converting energy to ultrasound energy (sound waves) with an alternating current that causes vibration. These sound waves cause the molecules in a small area of tissue to vibrate and heat tissue.
Is there evidence for ultrasound?
Current studies provide little evidence to support ultrasound, but there is evidence suggesting that the more ultrasound energy that is delivered, the better the outcomes.
Is ultrasound therapy good for PT?
Ultrasound therapy has been used for decades by both PT and OT. It’s a skilled intervention that requires training, and when used right it can be beneficial.
Does US medicine help with tendonitis?
It some studies, US has been shown to reduce inflammation in tendonitis (Medial/lateral epicondylitis) and carpal tunnel syndrome.
Does ultrasound help with carpal tunnel?
According to these studies, the benefits of ultrasound continue to favor injuries related to inflammation, carpal tunnel and possibly scar remodeling.
How Is Ultrasound Applied?
Ultrasound is performed with a machine that has an ultrasound transducer (sound head). A small amount of gel is applied to the particular body part; then your physical therapist slowly moves the sound head in a small circular direction on your body.
What is therapeutic ultrasound?
Therapeutic ultrasound is a treatment modality commonly used in physical therapy. It is used to provide deep heating to soft tissues in the body. These tissues include muscles, tendons, joints, and ligaments.
How Does Ultrasound Work?
Inside your physical therapist's ultrasound unit is a small crystal. When an electrical charge is applied to this crystal, it vibrates rapidly, creating piezoelectric waves. These waves are emitted from the ultra sound sound head as ultra sound waves.
What to do if you have a frozen shoulder?
If you have shoulder pain and have been diagnosed with a frozen shoulder, your physical therapist may use ultrasound to help improve the extensibility of the tissues around your shoulder prior to performing range of motion exercises. This may help improve the ability of your shoulder to stretch.
Why is ultrasound used in the body?
Ultrasound is often used to provide deep heating to soft tissue structures in the body. Deep heating tendons, muscles, or ligaments increases circulation to those tissues, which is thought to help the healing process. Increasing tissue temperature with ultrasound is also used to help decrease pain.
What are the contraindications for ultrasound?
There are some instances where you should not use ultrasound at all. These contraindications to ultrasound may include: 1 Over open wounds 2 Over metastatic lesions or any active area of cancer 3 Over areas of decreased sensation 4 Over parts of the body with metal implants, like in a total knee replacement of lumbar fusion 5 Near or over a pacemaker 6 Pregnancy 7 Around the eyes, breasts, or sexual organs 8 Over fractured bones 9 Near or over an implanted electrical stimulation device 10 Over active epiphyses in children 11 Over an area of acute infection
Can ultrasound be used for rotator cuff tears?
Generally speaking, any soft-tissue injury in the body may be a candidate for ultrasound therapy. Your physical therapist may use ultrasound for low back pain, neck pain, rota tor cuff te ars, knee meniscus tears, or ankle sprains.
What is therapeutic ultrasound?
Therapeutic ultrasound has been studied and used for the past seven decades to treat musculoskeletal injuries. Recently, a significant body of animal and human research has focused on the biomechanical effects of daily-applied, low intensity therapeutic ultrasound (LITUS) on soft tissue recovery. We performed a systematic review ...
What is the treatment for acute injury?
Many use the regimen of rest, ice, compression, elevation and stabilization (RICES) to treat acute injury, but are unsure what to do if the injury becomes chronic.1Whereas, many of these current treatment options address inflammation and pain management, therapeutic ultrasound can both manage pain and facilitate healing.
How does litus help with tendon healing?
For tendon-bone junction healing, LITUS treatment significantly improved healing and osteogenesis. Application of LITUS resulted in significantly more newly formed bone and improved tissue integration compared to controls.36-40In one study,39reported the amount of new bone formed was 2.6 and 3.0 times greater in the treatment group compared to controls at weeks 8 and 16, respectively. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the tendon-bone interface was also significantly increased with LITUS treatment, particularly after 4 weeks.37,41Type I and II collagen were increased with LITUS treatment,42,43and collagen fibers demonstrated higher organization.43Similarly, there was up-regulation of type I collagen gene expression with LITUS treatment compared to controls.44Additionally, in procedures replacing ligaments with tendons (i.e., anterior cruciate ligament surgery; ACL), LITUS treated tendons showed greater stiffness and peak load compared to controls.36,40,45
How does Litus help ligaments?
Ligament healing benefitted from the application of LITUS. LITUS treated ligaments exhibited superior mechanical properties including ultimate load, stiffness, and energy absorption.33-35LITUS-treated ligaments from one study were 34.2% stronger, 27.0% stiffer, and could absorb 54.4% more energy compared to sham-treated ligaments after 2 weeks of treatment. 35Another study demonstrated that after six weeks of LITUS treatment, ligaments were 39.5% stronger, 24.5% stiffer, could absorb 69.1% more energy, and were 10.6% larger than sham-treated ligaments.33Collagen fibril diameter was larger in a group treated with LITUS compared to controls,34and there was a greater relative proportion of type II collagen in LITUS-treated ligaments compared to controls at both 3 and 6 weeks.33
Can Litus be used for soft tissue?
Collectively, these studies are encouraging for the use of LITUS to treat soft tissue injuries in human; however, the delivery of therapeutic ultrasound has been traditionally applied in the inpatient setting, which limits both the duration of treatment and frequency of application.
How long has ultrasound been used in physical therapy?
Ultrasound has been used in physical therapy as a treatment to relieve aches and pains for nearly 70 years. But does ultrasound work?
Why is pulsed ultrasound considered nonthermal?
Because pulsed ultrasound interrupts the soundwave generation, the intensity output overtime is lower; resulting in non-thermal effects. Thermal v. Non-Thermal. Assuming for a moment that ultrasound is a well proven intervention for the patient or condition you have in mind, how do you know if you should be using ultrasound for thermal ...
What is Ultrasound and How Does it Work?
To establish exactly what we’re talking about, let’s first briefly discuss what ultrasound is and how it works.
What frequency is ultrasound?
The frequency of therapeutic ultrasound can be set from 1MHz to 3MHz, depending on the structures you wish to target. At 1 MHz, the ultrasonic waves penetrate deeper into the soft-tissue; while at 3MHz the effects are limited to more superficial structures.
What is duty cycle ultrasound?
Duty cycle is the total amount of treatment time which the ultrasound is actually ON for. This is where pulsed vs. continuous ultrasound comes into play. By setting the machine to, say 50%, you’re creating parameters in which the ultrasound will be alternatingly turned on and off, with a total “on time” accounting for 50% of the total treatment time. Continuous (100% duty cycle) ultrasound is what you want if you’re seeking thermal effects. Because pulsed ultrasound interrupts the soundwave generation, the intensity output overtime is lower; resulting in non-thermal effects.
What happens when sound waves are absorbed by the soft tissue?
When the alternating compressions and rarefactions are absorbed by the soft-tissue in the body, the mechanical energy of the sound waves (vibrations) is proposed to result in increased tissue temperature, increased localized blood flow, increased tissue extensibility, and accelerated metabolism through increased cellular permeability.
When was the systematic review of ultrasound done?
Systematic Reviews on Ultrasound. A systematic review of the effectiveness of ultrasound on musculoskeletal disorders done in 1999 by Van Der Windt, et al found that the evidence “did not support the existence of clinically important or statistically significant differences in favour of ultrasound therapy”.
What is therapeutic ultrasound?
Ultrasound is a therapeutic agent commonly used to treat sports-related musculoskeletal conditions, including tendon injuries or tendinopathy. Despite the widespread popularity of therapeutic ultrasound, few clinical studies have proved its efficacy.
What is ultrasound used for?
Ultrasound is a therapeutic agent commonly used to treat sports-related musculoskeletal conditions, including tendon injuries or tendinopathy. Despite the widespread popularity of therapeutic ultrasound, few clinical studies have proved its efficacy. Several animal studies have been conducted to explore its effectiveness.
Does ultrasound help tendon healing?
There is strong supporting evidence from animal studies about the positive effects of ultrasound on tendon healing. In vitro studies have also demonstrated that ultrasound can stimulate cell migration, proliferation, and collagen synthesis of tendon cells that may benefit tendon healing.
