Ultrasound for Sports Medicine and Sports Injuries

Dr. David Krey, Family Medicine & Sports Medicine: So, ultrasound in sports medicine for the musculoskeletal system is a newer modality in the sports medicine world, and we do use it in the clinic fairly often for either diagnostic or therapeutic uses. So, the diagnostic part would be for more real-time imaging that we can do right here in the clinic for all sorts of injuries from ankle, knee, hip, elbow, shoulder and many other injuries, where we can actually look at the soft tissue structures to assess the patient's injury.

Ultrasound is not invasive at all. It uses no radiation. It uses sound waves to actually look at the patient's soft tissue structure. It's not very good at looking at bone, but it's very good at looking at the muscles, tendons and ligaments of somebody's body, which is what the majority of injuries are in the sports medicine world.

The benefit of using ultrasound is that we have it right here in the clinics at Sauk Prairie Healthcare. And, it's pain-free. We get real-time images and can really get good information within a 30 minute office visit.

Other therapeutic uses we use in the clinic are for ultrasound-guided injections, and there are many different injection types and different parts of the body we do injections on. And, it is very beneficial to use ultrasound because we know we're getting in the right spot with the medication, and that can just really improve outcomes in how patients respond to these injections.

Ultrasound use in the United States; in the sports medicine world, it's not that widely used, so it's still growing. But, the Sauk Prairie Healthcare system has made the commitment to sports medicine, and we are on the cutting edge by using ultrasound in our clinics.

Sauk Prairie Healthcare
260 26th Street
Prairie du Sac, WI 53578
608-643-3311