What is the difference between Therapeutic Ultrasound Therapy and Diagnostic Ultrasound ?
Therapeutic Ultrasound therapy is different to the more commonly known diagnostic ultrasound in that the later is used to capture images of internal organs and tissues.
Therapeutic Ultrasound therapy is a tool used by some therapists to encourage deep heating in soft tissues thus promote the bodies healing response which in turn helps to reduce pain, heres how.
When Ultrasound waves pass through soft tissue they cause molecular vibration,
this produces thermal heat as well as other non thermal effects.
The therapeutic effect of thermal heat when applied to damaged tissue is said to initiate the resolution of chronic inflammatory states.
The non-thermal effects from ultrasound waves are also said to cause rapid contraction and expansion of microscopic gas bubbles (cavitation) around injured tissue, theoretically speeding up the healing process.
Therapeutic Ultrasound therapy is only used as a modality to help complement a client or patients treatment plan and should only be used for durations of 5-10mins at a time.
There are certain contraindications (reasons not to use ultrasound) to be considered before therapeutic ultrasound should be applied, some obvious, some not so obvious
therefore always seek professional advice from a fully trained practitioner.
