Sports injury recovery receives boost

Using hand-carried ultrasound allows accurate diagnoses to be made rapidly and provides an essential assessment tool for retraining the patients’ muscles, preventing injury recurrence as well as reducing pain and promoting recovery.

Jane Grey, sports physiotherapist at the Harley Street practice, said: “I use the MicroMaxx ultrasound system specifically to look at the transverse abdominus and the multifidus muscles in real-time. These deep muscles are essential for core strength and are relevant for almost every patient that we see, particularly those with spinal problems, but also for peripheral joint injuries. When these muscles are not working properly, other muscles are recruited and the change in movement patterns can lead, for example, to overuse injuries.

“I chose the MicroMaxx because it is small, compact and portable, we could integrate it with our computer system, it gives good quality images and it is very easy to use. Scanning the patients while they perform retraining exercises helps them enormously as they can see the muscle working correctly and I can also check the timing of the muscle contraction. It is also useful to be able to record scans so that we can review the patient’s progress at a future date.”