Stop using ultrasound to speed up fracture healing, experts recommend

Ultrasound to speed up bone healing after fracture has little or no impact on pain or recovery time, experts highlight in the British Medical Journal.

Every year around 4% of people of all ages have a fracture, 10% of whom experience slow or complicated healing.

Low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) was approved for fracture healing by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1994 and is supported by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The devices are expensive and commonly used in clinical practice. But some studies have shown that the potential benefits of LIPUS on bone healing are highly uncertain.

So a panel of experts (surgeons, physiotherapists, clinicians and patients) looked at the latest evidence and concluded that LIPUS has little or no impact on the time it takes for:

• The facture to heal;
• The person to bear full weight on the area;
• The person to return to work;
• Or the number of subsequent operations.

They have unanimously recommended against LIPUS for people with any bone fractures or osteotomy (the surgical cutting of a bone to allow realignment).

“We have moderate to high certainty of a lack of benefit for outcomes important to patients, and, combined with the high costs of treatment, LIPUS represents an inefficient use of limited healthcare resources,” they conclude.

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