Discuss…….

My doctor recently sent me for ultrasound therapy on my knee.

This was immediately after I had complained to her about the practice now employing a chiropractor.

She has assured me that whilst she shares my concerns about chiro, this is “legit” chiro, so my concerns aren’t warranted.

After reading up on therapeutic ultrasound, it seems I may be just another guinea pig being used to add to the anecdotal database.

Skeptic Pete said:

Discuss…….

No, you can’t make me.

This summary of a Cochrane review presents what we know from research about the effect of therapeutic ultrasound on knee or hip osteoarthritis. The previous version of this review concluded that therapeutic ultrasound had no benefit over fake therapeutic ultrasound in pain relief and functional status.

The updated review shows that in people with osteoarthritis,
-Therapeutic ultrasound may be beneficial for people with osteoarthritis of the knee.

-Therapeutic ultrasound may improve your physical function but this finding could be the result of chance.

- We are uncertain about the magnitude of effects on pain relief or the ability to use your knee, because of the low quality of the evidence.
-Therapeutic ultrasound may not have any side effects: no side effects were reported, but we do not have precise information about side effects. This is particularly true for rare but serious side effects.

There are no studies that address the benefits of therapeutic ultrasound in people with hip osteoarthritis.

What is osteoarthritis and what is therapeutic ultrasound?

Osteoarthritis is a disease of the joints, such as your knee or hip. When the joint loses cartilage, the bone grows to try and repair the damage. Instead of making things better, however, the bone grows abnormally and makes things worse. For example, the bone can become misshapen and make the joint painful and unstable. This can affect your physical function or ability to use your knee.
Therapeutic ultrasound means using sound waves to try and relieve pain or disability. Your doctor or physiotherapist will use a round-headed wand or probe on the skin of the painful area. Ultrasound gel is used on the wand and on your skin to make it more comfortable and help the sound waves reach the affected area.

Best estimate of what happens to people with osteoarthritis who have had therapeutic ultrasound for a duration of 2-8 weeks:

Pain
-People who used therapeutic ultrasound had an improvement in their pain of about 3 on a scale from 0 (no pain) to 10 (extreme pain) after using it up to 2 months.
-People who used a fake therapeutic ultrasound had an improvement in their pain of about 2 on a scale from 0 to 10 after using it up to 2 months.
Another way of saying this is:
- 37 people out of 100 who use therapeutic ultrasound respond to treatment (37%).
- 31 people out of 100 who use fake therapeutic ultrasound respond to treatment (31%).
- 6 more people respond to treatment with therapeutic ultrasound than with fake therapeutic ultrasound (difference of 6%).

Authors’ conclusions:
In contrast to the previous version of this review, our results suggest that therapeutic ultrasound may be beneficial for patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Because of the low quality of the evidence, we are uncertain about the magnitude of the effects on pain relief and function, however. Therapeutic ultrasound is widely used for its potential benefits on both knee pain and function, which may be clinically relevant. Appropriately designed trials of adequate power are therefore warranted.

http://www.cochrane.org/CD003132/MUSKEL_therapeutic-ultrasound-for-osteoarthritis

My mother had theraputic ultrasound on both hips. They used chainsaws and drills.

Thanks Poik.

Skeptic Pete said:

Thanks Poik.

No worries, physios seem to love it too. As far as health practitioners go, physios seem the most open to woo type stuff so I was fairly suspect on such things too.

Sorry to hear about your knee Peat.
Have you tried unction?
Before applying Blessed Unction from the PeterT Ministries I could hardly genuflect let alone kneel.

so it needs,

wait for it

“more research”

It will be great when people can have their pain scanned and then see the areas in pain on a monitor

how will they do that

“more research”

and cannabis used for pain management?

more research

makes you think that medical research is way under funded

Skeptic Pete said:

Discuss…….

Used one diagnostic ultrasound machine to determine the thickness of steel plates. By angling the direction I was able to get it to see through the steel plate as if it wasn’t there. Very interesting.

Have also bought an ultrasound machine at an aquarium shop. It generates cavitation bubbles with exceedingly high temperatures and pressures that break to generate mist droplets of fairly uniform sizes.

Ultrasound has been used to do chemistry because of the extreme temperatures and pressures that it generates. It’s well known that ultrasound can kill ship propellers, even steel ones by pitting erosion. Ultrasound has also been suggested seriously as a possible way to get temperatures and pressures high enough for nuclear fusion.

but what does the ultra sound do?

vibrate bones?

they need to work on a material to replace the cartilage

CrazyNeutrino said:

but what does the ultra sound do?

vibrate bones?

they need to work on a material to replace the cartilage

I forgot

“More research”

CrazyNeutrino said:

but what does the ultra sound do?

vibrate bones?

they need to work on a material to replace the cartilage

It could create lots of microdamage to all tissues, relying on natural repair processes to repair the old damage along with the new.