Musculoskeletal Ultrasound; The Third Eye of the Rheumatologist

Safaa Mahran, A.

Associate Professor Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, Assiut University, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut, Egypt

*Correspondence to: Dr. Safaa Mahran, A., Associate Professor Rheumatology and Rehabilitation, Assiut University, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut, Egypt.

Copyright © 2018 Dr. Safaa Mahran, A. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The use of musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSUS) examination in the rheumatology field is expanding progressively.

It is a bedside, non-invasive, radiation free and relatively cheap procedure that helps the rheumatologist to pick lot of details about the joints and soft tissue related structures.

It is sensitive in detecting tiny erosions not visible in conventional x ray. By adding power doppler examination, the differentiation between active and inactive lesions is made easily possible. In the same session, you can detect enthesopathies in different areas.

Rheumatologists can use the MSUS in guiding their intraarticular and soft tissue injections. Hydro dissection of entrapped nerves could be done accurately using MSUS replacing open surgeries and their complications in most of the cases.

It also helps the rheumatologist in the follow up of their patients and to better manage them on a solid easy accessed documented measure.