Musculoskeletal Ultrasound is a great way to assess sports-related injuries and is significantly more cost-effective than an MRI.

When it comes to sports injuries, imaging can play an important role in determining exactly what is causing pain to occur. Most sports injuries occur when there is damage to a muscle, ligament, or tendon. Musculoskeletal Ultrasound is a great way to assess many of these injuries as it is significantly more cost-effective than an MRI.

What is Musculoskeletal Ultrasound?

Musculoskeletal Ultrasound is a safe and painless imaging technique used to assess many sports injuries. It produces a high-quality image while being a fraction of the price of an MRI.

Musculoskeletal Ultrasound also has the benefit of being able to create a dynamic image. Meaning that you can move the athlete into the position that produces pain and see exactly what is going on. An MRI, on the other hand, can only take a picture when the individual is lying still and is unable to assess how movement affects the joint.

What can Musculoskeletal Ultrasound detect?

Musculoskeletal Ultrasound can assess joint pain.

It can evaluate tendon tears, tendonitis, muscle tears, ligament sprains, ligament tears, joint inflammation, nerve entrapments, and in some cases arthritis.

What are the limitations of Musculoskeletal Ultrasound?

When pain is coming from inside the joint, such as in a labral tear, Musculoskeletal Ultrasound is unable to obtain a proper image.

Fortunately, most sports injuries are superficial and therefore able to be successfully evaluated using Musculoskeletal Ultrasound.

Why is it important to receive injection therapy using Ultrasound Guidance?

We found that using Ultrasound Guidance during our Non-Surgical Therapy guarantees the accuracy of each treatment and increases the treatment’s effectiveness.

The following figure compares the accuracy of ultrasound-guided treatments versus treatments using only palpation (no imaging).

Location	Ultrasound (%)	Palpation (%)
AC Joint	100	40
Shoulder	95	79
Subacromial bursa	100	63
Biceps Sheath	100	66
Knee	100	79
Pes Anserine	92	17
Hip	97	32
Tibiotalar Joint	100	85
Peroneal Sheath	100	60