Therapeutic Ultrasound: The Effectiveness of Ultrasound and the Importance of Parameter Settings

Abstract

Therapeutic ultrasound can be an important modality for clinician's use to heat tissue. Previous research has concluded that therapeutic ultrasound treatments may be ineffective. There are several options for parameters depending on type of treatment and desired goal. The purpose of this study was to determine if specific parameters for a specific desired treatment goal were correct. The parameters included 1.0 and 3.0 megahertz frequencies of continuous ultrasound treatment on 20 subjects. Tissue temperature was measured with thermocouples in the calf. Data analysis consisted of running a one way repeated measures ANOVA to compare sample means as well as running t-test's for each change in temperature for each setting. Some subjects reached a temperature which could be considered therapeutic and only a few subjects reached the temperature goal. This is important for clinicians to note that every patient is different and that parameters will differ with each machine.