Overview the Development of Muscle Skeletal Ultrasound in Mainland and Its Future

Abstract

For a long period of time, the muscle skeletal ultrasound (MSU) has been major serviced in sports medicine in China. As some Chinese rheumatologists realize the value of ultrasound in rheumatism diseases, some doctors try to learn and master this skill. These attempts in the 1990 s, some scholars through practice in patients, some one even comparing with the autopsy results, to improve on the understanding of the pathology of sonographic findings. There were also many doctors going overseas, bring the advanced knowledge of rheumatism MSU back to China. On the basis of these early work, these pioneers tried to further promote the technology in mainland. These efforts, including through a variety of academic conference to introduce MSU, holding workshops, or taking refresher courses. At the same time, we also invite foreign experts to China, which help us to up-to-date the trend of this technology. On the basis of these efforts, every year, now more than 10 hospitals add to the queer to do MSU for rheumatism, and more than 100 doctors receive standardized musculoskeletal ultrasound training. There are tens of thousands of rheumatism patients accepted MSU exam every year, and the numbers quickly raising up to 100 thousands level. From the development of domestic MSU is accelerated developing. More and more centers can provide high quality training of MSU. There are five centers contributing training of MSU persistently. There are also dozens promotions of all kinds of meetings every year. The MSU has been extended from tier one and tier two cities, gradually to tier three cities, and in some economically developed areas, it has already entered tier four cities. More patients have the opportunity to receive this exam at hometown, which providing great help for early diagnosis of arthritis and the evaluation of accurate clinical outcomes. Same as international counterparts, the development of MSU will encounter some bottlenecks, such as rheumatism need higher performance of ultrasonic instrument and special setting and technical. The characteristic of ultrasound itself leads to the cost time of physicians in the exploration process, and the ultrasonic probing technique has the potential to optimize the demand and the potential. In China, there are some policy barriers for rheumatologist physician to do MSU, the related association is putting efforts to improve the situation. While Chinese health care system is also in reforming and severe changes, there will great enhance ultrasound in the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatism. Clinicians also recognized that the new information technologies have huge helps to MSU. In the near future, greatly change will appears in MSU, not only on the mode of exam but also the efficiency. In general, the development of MSU in mainland is flourishing, more and more doctors and center are involving this work, and more and more patients are benefiting from it.