View From The Treatment Room at Hednesford Town FC

At times the treatment room has been like a hospital casualty unit. Players turn up with bruises, bumps and strains. On one occasion at a former club I was with, I had eleven players who patiently waited for their turn on one of the treatment couches.

 Massage is an important treatment because it is `hands on` and is good to feel for swelling. Other forms of treatment include using electrotherapy machines. One of the two electrotherapy machines I use is an Ultrasound one. Basically I use this machine when a player is still carrying a soft tissue injury some days after the original sprain or strain.

While treating one of the players, he wanted to know how it worked. 

In its simplest terms an electrical wire from the machine goes to the transfuser (the treatment head) which has a crystal and in front of that you have a metal plate. The electricity that powers the machine vibrates the crystal which then will make the metal plate expand and contract, very much like a drum skin. That drum effect will send out sounds waves or waves of vibration.  These ultrasound waves do not go through the air like sound waves. At a high frequency these waves will need a medium which will be a gel that is water based.

The use of water based gel is also one of the safety factors for using ultrasound. When the machine is in first switched on it must be in contact with the skin of the person via the water gel otherwise it could over vibrate and crack the crystal which is expensive to replace.

The machine can be programmed to emit low or high waves in watts (a measurement of energy) although you can go up to 3 watts.

The average wattage in use is 0.6 watt which is quite low. Ultrasound therefore goes through the skin, through muscle and bounces off the bone. The ultrasound wave would vibrate the cellular level of the body (in a forward and backwards movement) as it works its way through especially into deep muscle tissues.

The muscle is getting greater activity as the sound wave passes through it. This does have an advantage over ordinary `hands on` massage.  The treatment needs only be a few minutes at a time and can be repeated as often as necessary. The patient will not feel anything as long as the therapist, operating the ultrasound machine, keeps the treatment head moving at all times in small circles. This avoids any burning of the skin

The benefits of ultrasound is that the cells of the injured muscle are moved around in such a way which increases the metabolism, opening up the cells, to let the healing nutrients in through the blood supply. It also removes swelling or muscle spasm caused by the injury. It softens scar tissue  which helps in the healing process especially when deep pressure in a massage is applied to break it down.