Musculoskeletal ultrasound
POC ultrasound indispensable for elite sport in Wales
Point-of-care ultrasound is an essential tool for Dr Mark Ridgewell, an early pioneer for sports and exercise medicine (SEM) and, for the past 13 years, consultant sports physician at the Sport Wales Institute.
He explained: “Point-of-care musculoskeletal ultrasound has developed into an extremely useful tool for SEM, particularly in the last 10 years; it has certainly become indispensable for me as an extension of my clinical examination. Patients these days are well read and aware – consultations often take the form of a discussion about managing a condition – and the ability to explain things to individuals with the help of ultrasound is a real advantage. It is excellent, for example, for assessing tendons during rehabilitation and recovery following an injury, or for looking at injuries dynamically, to work out what’s happening when a joint or tendons move. Soft tissue overuse injuries are often a lot more subtle and more difficult to explain, and the ability to use ultrasound is a huge benefit here. I also use ultrasound regularly for guiding injections, particularly in shoulders, hips and around the ankle.”
The High Performance Area at the Sport Wales National Centre in the centre of Cardiff is now equipped with a SonoSite X-Porte® system on Mark’s recommendation: “It is fantastic, I’m very happy with it, for ease of use, clarity of picture and the size of the screen. Even some of my patients have commented on the image quality and that, in itself is very important; patients will simply take themselves elsewhere if there isn’t access to this sort of state-of-the-art technology. Keeping up to date is extremely important; the elite sports world is constantly changing and you can’t be left behind.”
Source: FUJIFILM SonoSite Ltd
25.05.2016
