No matter how good we think we are, as yet we don’t have the gift of x ray vision – but we do have the next best thing!
We are one of a handful of clinics in the UK that use Ultrasound scanning machines to help us assess and treat injuries. We are aware this isn’t the norm in our industry, but we do things a little differently.
Sometimes assessing something manually just doesn’t give you all the information you need so imagine being able to see inside that frozen shoulder or tennis elbow or take a good look at that painful tendon or arthritic knee.
Ultrasound scanning is super useful in aiding our diagnosis of injuries and gives us real time pictures of the ‘inner workings’ of your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. It can provide us with detailed images of muscle tears or damage to tendons for example and is an excellent tool to scan a joint whilst it is moving (you can’t do that with an MRI). It also enables us to perform intricate treatments like ultrasound guided injections. If you have ever had a ‘blind’ cortisone injection you’ll know they can be a little hit and miss!
The scans are performed by a specialists in diagnostic scanning who has spent many years scanning injuries and processing the findings, (you have to look at a lot of healthy tendons to know what a poorly one looks like!) Also, the equipment we use is the best money can buy, you need to know that you are in good hands.
The scan is painless and non-invasive and because the images are collected in real time, you won’t have to wait for your results.
Sure, imaging will help pinpoint exactly what and where the problem is, but as yet, the machines are not clever enough to tell you, or us, why you’ve got it. That’s our job. So we never use it as a stand-alone diagnostic tool. Before we conduct a scan we will perform a thorough assessment of your problem and also assess your suitability for the scan. Then from our findings we can pass you into the capable hands of our physiotherapists and rehabilitators or if you need to see a specialist we’ll arrange that too.
Read more about diagnostic scanning in our regular blog.