Discover the Convenience of In-Office Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Imaging for Physical Therapy
If you’re dealing with chronic pain from arthritis or an injury, you may feel like you’ve already tried all of your options for pain management. Physical therapy involves gentle stretches and targeted exercises to strengthen your muscles and joints, improve blood circulation, and promote tissue healing to get you back on your feet.
But before we can get to the hands-on treatment, our team at Exchange Physical Therapy Group needs to understand the exact issue you’re experiencing so we can come up with a custom treatment plan. Diagnostic ultrasounds let us see detailed images of your joints, muscles, and ligaments — anything under your skin — to diagnose and treat the cause of your pain.
What Are Diagnostic Ultrasounds?
An ultrasound machine uses sound waves to generate high-definition images and 3D scans of your joints, muscles, soft tissues, and bones. You won’t feel discomfort, and the sound waves will bounce off any healthy tissue to show us where the issue lies.
With a diagnostic ultrasound, we can diagnose soft tissue problems and more, making it a key tool in the treatment of diverse health conditions, including:
- Muscle spasms
- Tendinitis
- Arthritis
- Bursitis
- Fractures
- Frozen shoulder
- Strains and sprains
- Tears
- Joint effusions
- Bone degeneration or calcification
- Carpal tunnel
- Rotator cuff injuries
- Plantar fasciitis
- Bone spurs
By determining the exact tissue that is not functioning properly, we can know which areas to target in your physical therapy treatment plan. Handheld diagnostic is used for assessing the soft tissue and the documentation of functional impairments, not for medical diagnostic reasons.
How Do We Use Musculoskeletal Ultrasounds to Aid Your Treatment?
Your doctor or another healthcare provider might have performed an ultrasound before you started physical therapy. Why do you need another ultrasound or several ultrasounds throughout your treatment at Exchange Physical Therapy Group?
We use ultrasounds to:
- Examine your area of concern during your consultation to determine your treatment plan
- Generate full diagnostic reports read by a registered musculoskeletal sonographer (RMSKS)
- Guide dry needling in a specific location
- Track your progress with monthly scans to see if your treatment plan is working and if any modifications are necessary
Benefits of Diagnostic Ultrasounds for Your Physical Therapy
Diagnostic ultrasounds benefit your physical therapy process in several ways. At Exchange Physical Therapy Group, we use them to:
- Diagnose: Manual palpation (feeling your muscles and joints with hands) doesn’t offer visibility into some issues. Ultrasounds are a noninvasive way to see beneath your skin and diagnose the root cause of your pain.
- Get a clear picture: We scan images with a high-definition 3D scanner that can identify sprains, strains, tears, joint effusions, and more anywhere else you’re experiencing discomfort, like your feet, shoulders, or hips.
- Offer convenience: We can perform an ultrasound right in our office as part of your physical therapy assessment, with no need for referral to another healthcare provider.
- Give you confidence: With our state-of-the-art ultrasound technology, you’ll have confidence that we’ve found the issue, diagnosed it, and started treatment all within your appointment.
- Incorporate high-tech equipment: We use a small, handheld ultrasound device — no clunky cart or outdated corded tech — for a streamlined, comfortable, easy ultrasound.
- Track progress: With monthly scans to check on your progress, we make ultrasounds an ongoing part of your care to ensure that you’re on the right track.
Visit Exchange Physical Therapy Group in New Jersey to Start on the Road to Recovery
Diagnostic ultrasounds are important to your treatment at Exchange Physical Therapy Group. With detailed 3D scans that we take right here in our office, we craft a custom treatment plan.
Our registered musculoskeletal sonographers will assess your condition with noninvasive ultrasounds and work with our physical therapists to create a treatment plan that targets your symptoms.
We’re dedicated to providing the unique therapies patients need to achieve full-body healing, including dry needling and orthopedic physical therapy guided by diagnostic ultrasounds.
With monthly scans to track your treatment progress, you’ll always know how your recovery is going. Schedule your new patient appointment today by filling out our contact form. We have offices across Jersey City, Weehawken, and Hoboken, NJ.
