Joint Injury Treatment: Washing Away Calcific Tendonitis With Ultrasound Guided Injections

Ultrasound Guided Lavage Benefits Patients with Calcific Tendonitis

Do you have very intense pain around your shoulder at the rotator cuff region? Has your doctor diagnosed you with calcific tendonitis? You might be wondering what this means. Calcific tendonitis essentially means that there is a build-up of calcium in your rotator cuff known as a calcific deposit. This build-up of calcium can cause severe pressure in your tendon and can be extremely painful.

One possible calcific tendonitis treatment is known as ultrasound guided lavage or ultrasound guided injections. An ultrasound is a form of imaging that uses sound waves to develop the images and will show your healthcare provider what is taking place within your body. Radiologists regularly use ultrasounds to help them during a surgical procedure.

How Does Ultrasound Guided Lavage Work?

The definition of lavage is “to wash away or irrigate.” Calcific tendonitis can be treated with this type of joint calcification treatment. Essentially, your physician will be able to remove the calcium deposits in your joints using ultrasound guided injections without needing to perform an operation.

There are multiple steps needed to complete an ultrasound guided injection, including:

Using a small needle to inject a local numbing agent into your skin
Using the ultrasound to lead a needle into the calcific deposit, which will break the clump into smaller pieces
Flushing a mixture of saline and an anesthetic in the tendon area to extract the pieces of calcium
Injecting some steroid medicine into the fluid-filled sac that enfolds the tendons and muscles of the shoulder

How Do You Benefit from this Joint Calcification Treatment?

There are a number of benefits that you’ll experience from ultrasound guided injections to wash away calcific tendonitis. Some of these advantages include the following:

This procedure is less invasive than surgery and your body will be able to recuperate much more quickly from it than an operation. A surgery, on the other hand, is a more serious procedure and will take longer for a person to recover afterward.
The needle used is very small and not much different from a needle used to draw blood.
You will not have to undergo general anesthesia, which means fewer drugs will be used.
This process will cause inflammation in the joint area, which will stimulate the immune system to break the calcium deposits into smaller pieces and dissolve the deposits. This is important if the lavage isn’t able to remove all the calcium deposits.

What Results are Expected After the Procedure?

According to a study published in The Egyptian Journal of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, the removal of the calcific deposit from the tendon had a technical success rate of 60 percent.

In addition, six out of ten patients had all of their pain from the calcific tendonitis disappear after six months. In addition, two of the ten patients had their pain reduce significantly upon the six-month follow-up visit. Another two patients only saw a mild reduction of their pain after six months.

Furthermore, eight patients out of ten had regained full movement of their joint six months after their procedure while two patients showed a limited reduction in their disability.

The type of patients who are the best candidates for lavage treatment guided by an ultrasound include those with shoulder pain as well as limitation in the movement of their upper limbs caused by tendon calcifications. There are no restrictions in terms of age or gender for this treatment. It is necessary, though, to have symptoms related to tendon calcifications. The best outcomes are among patients within the middle of a Hyperalgesia pain crisis.

Why You Should Seek a Joint Injury Specialist

Have you injured your shoulder or another joint after playing sports or exercising too intensely? Do you have an old tennis injury that keeps recurring? For recurring injuries or ones that are affecting your day-to-day activities, visiting a sports injury doctor at a sports injury treatment clinic may be the best choice for you.

If you are feeling constant shoulder pain and have an inflamed shoulder that has lasted for several days, it may be time to seek out a doctor to help treat and alleviate your pain. You will likely need a full physical exam and X-rays to figure out what could be causing your discomfort.

In addition, if your shoulder pain or tendon calcification is immobilizing your shoulder joint and making it difficult to carry out your daily activities, you may need to visit a joint injury specialist for a remedy. Contact the Portland-area experts at Sports Health Northwest by calling 503-747-6376 today!