MSKU-2: Diagnostic Musculoskeletal Ultrasound of the Lower Extremities

Diagnostic Musculoskeletal Ultrasound (MSKU) is an evidence-based, cost efficient, imaging modality. MSKU has diagnostic accuracy comparable to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for common soft tissue pathology, including enthesopathy, tendinopathy, ligament pathology, joint pathology, and compressive neuropathies of the lower extremity.  Licensed healthcare professionals including physical therapists (PT), medical doctors (MD), osteopathic doctors (DO), Chiropractors (DC), physician assistants (PA) and nurse practitioners (NP) meet the educational requirements to practice MSKU and work towards the prerequisites needed to sit for the national registry exam in musculoskeletal sonography (RMSK).

This two-day live diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound course includes 70% hands-on practical training and 30% didactic instruction. This course focuses on the essential components of diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound of the lower extremity. Participants will perform diagnostic ultrasound on the hip, knee, ankle, and foot. Both normal anatomy and pathology of specific tissues will be addressed in detail. This course does include but is not limited totissue specific diagnoses of the lower extremity, including joint effusions, hip capsule/labral pathology, gluteal/hamstring tendinopathy, patellar/quad tendinopathy, patellar impingement syndromes, collateral ligament pathology, meniscal pathology, osteoarthritis, achilles/peroneal/posterior tibialis tendinopathy, and plantar fasciitis.

Lecture and live demonstrations with expert sonographers, using state of the art equipment, are utilized to prepare the participant for extensive scanning during the laboratory sessions. The upper and lower extremity courses (MSKU-1 & 2) combined with the Physics in MSK ultrasound (MSKU-3) and RMSK Registry Exam Preparation & Review (MSKU-4) courses are designed to successfully prepare the participant for the national RMSK registry exam.