Ultrasound

On the TV this week I saw a sports physio doing ultrasound to an injured calf muscle and I was interested in the technique being used. Whilst he talked to the camera he wizzed the treatment head round at a speed the same as if he was mixing a cake. I'm not sure this was how he learnt to do it and if the technique was changed for the sake of the camera but it would be interesting to know how effective it was. Any area of injured tissue would have received the briefest of exposure to the ultrasound waves. However it made me think about the use of ultrasound and the way it was developed. I wondered if the physio was afraid of setting up the dreaded cavitation effect in the tissues but if you want to know more about this dread effect you will have to trawl the folklore of the profession as I expect nobody has actually done the "R" word on it [research]. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's all based on a limited number of in vitro tissue studies and very little on the adverse effects of ultrasound has been done in the clinical situation. No doubt the athlete receiving the treatment felt better for it but was this because someone was seen to be helping him rather than the fact that sound energy actually reached the site of injury and even if those magical soundwave got there, does anybody really knows if they make any difference to the healing?