Imaging technologies like X-ray have been around since the late 1800s, and it’s no exaggeration to say that they were game changers in the world of medicine. While X-ray still remains a great workhorse, newer technologies like ultrasound — first used in the 1950s — have advanced diagnostic capabilities even further.
As a sports medicine and family care practitioner, No Mercy Sports Medicine’s Dr. Moisés Irizarry-Román understands the importance of having these digital technologies on hand, which is why we offer musculoskeletal ultrasound. Here’s a look at three reasons you might need a musculoskeletal ultrasound.
Before we dive into the many uses of ultrasound, let’s quickly review how this technology works. With ultrasound, we deliver harmless high-frequency sound waves into your body that bounce off of structures. The ultrasound collects this bounceback information and relies on a computer to turn the echos into images.
This seems complex, but it happens in real time, giving us a live picture of your internal structures.
Arthritis is an issue that affects millions of Americans — more than 53 million to be more precise. Aside from being common, the other important point about arthritis is that there are more than 100 different types of diseases that lead to joint pain and inflammation and, as such, qualify as arthritis.
Because “arthritis” is a catchall term for a host of conditions, our first goal when you have joint pain or inflammation is to identify the type of arthritis you’re dealing with. While X-rays can paint some of the picture in terms of hard bone tissues, ultrasound can complete the basic picture by giving us a view of soft tissue involvement.
Ultrasound not only helps us identify what type of arthritis is plaguing your joints, but it can also help us track the progression of the disease.
We specialize in sports medicine, so we’re very familiar with the myriad ways you can hurt yourself on the field, the court, or simply walking down the street.
One of our best tools for identifying musculoskeletal injuries is ultrasound. With this sound wave technology, we can look more closely at soft tissues — tendons, ligaments, and muscles — to determine whether there’s any damage. As such, ultrasound helps us diagnose common musculoskeletal injuries like:
Whatever your injury, if an X-ray isn’t giving us a complete picture, we can turn to ultrasound.
Another great way in which we use ultrasound imaging is to diagnose nerve entrapment issues. For example, we can use ultrasound to determine whether your wrist and hand pain is due to carpal tunnel syndrome, which is the most common nerve entrapment issue, affecting up to 5% of the population.
Whether it’s carpal tunnel or sciatica, ultrasound can help us better visualize the nerve and what’s compressing it, making it easier for us to deliver pain-relieving treatments.
As you can see, our ultrasound technology plays many important roles at our practice when it comes to diagnosing, treating, and tracking musculoskeletal conditions.
If you’d like to avail yourself of this important imaging service, please contact our office in Miami, Florida, by calling 305-614-6757 or use our online messaging form to book an appointment.
