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Review
. 2021 Jun 18;10(12):2698.
doi: 10.3390/jcm10122698.

Low-Intensity Continuous Ultrasound Therapies—A Systematic Review of Current State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives

Sardar M Z Uddin  1 , David E Komatsu  1 , Thomas Motyka  2 , Stephanie Petterson  3
Affiliations
Review

Low-Intensity Continuous Ultrasound Therapies—A Systematic Review of Current State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives

Sardar M Z Uddin et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Therapeutic ultrasound has been studied for over seven decades for different medical applications. The versatility of ultrasound applications are highly dependent on the frequency, intensity, duration, duty cycle, power, wavelength, and form. In this review article, we will focus on low-intensity continuous ultrasound (LICUS). LICUS has been well-studied for numerous clinical disorders, including tissue regeneration, pain management, neuromodulation, thrombosis, and cancer treatment. PubMed and Google Scholar databases were used to conduct a comprehensive review of all research studying the application of LICUS in pre-clinical and clinical studies. The review includes articles that specify intensity and duty cycle (continuous). Any studies that did not identify these parameters or used high-intensity and pulsed ultrasound were not included in the review. The literature review shows the vast implication of LICUS in many medical fields at the pre-clinical and clinical levels. Its applications depend on variables such as frequency, intensity, duration, and type of medical disorder. Overall, these studies show that LICUS has significant promise, but conflicting data remain regarding the parameters used, and further studies are required to fully realize the potential benefits of LICUS.

Keywords: arthritis; bone healing; low-intensity continuous ultrasound; low-intensity pulsed ultrasound; pain management; regeneration; soft tissue healing; sonophoresis; sustained acoustic medicine; ultrasound.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Illustration of the fundamental difference between pulsed and continuous ultrasound waveforms. Top: pulsed US waveform showing ON/OFF cycles. Bottom: a continuous US waveform is a continuous wave with no ON/OFF cycles.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Applications of LICUS in medicine. LICUS can be used to regenerate soft and hard tissues, pain management, sonophoresis, thrombosis, and apoptosis.
Figure 3
Figure 3
PRISMA flow chart: describing the methodology of article selection for review.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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