Musculoskeletal Ultrasound and Guided Joint Injections Educational Activities

Musculoskeletal Ultrasound and Guided Joint Injections Educational Activities is organized by UC San Diego School of Medicine, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and will be held from Dec 10 - 12, 2025 at UC San Diego Health Center for Bleeding and Clotting Disorders, San Diego, California, United States of America.

Overview:
The UC San Diego Musculoskeletal Ultrasound and Guided Joint Injections Educational Activities have been created to provide a comprehensive modular curriculum to teach point-of-care musculoskeletal ultrasound for the evaluation of ankles, knees, elbows, hips and spine, and to guide intra-articular needle placement for injections and aspirations. Small groups with a high faculty to participant ratio provides a rich and interactive learning environment with ample opportunity for hands-on practice with colleagues and patient volunteers. Course participants will learn basic ultrasound physics, how to operate ultrasound machines (including the use of small emerging small hand-held devices), sono-anatomy and sono-pathology of important arthritic conditions as well as ultrasound-guided joint injection techniques. The curriculum will include how to recognize joint bleeds and distinguish between simple and complex effusions, as well as the Joint Activity and Damage Exam (JADE), a validated joint ultrasound protocol for evaluation of hemophilic joints.

Statement of Need:
Arthritic conditions are frequent, and benefit from symptomatic relief measures as a bridge to joint replacement. The clinical exam to diagnose and treat arthritic conditions, joint problems and musculoskeletal abnormalities, is unreliable, since range of motion deficits, warmth, swelling and pain are non-specific and don't permit the distinction between conditions. Therefore, point-of-care imaging is rapidly advancing and has become critical to practice state-of-the-art musculoskeletal medicine. High resolution Musculoskeletal Ultrasound (MSKUS) with Power Doppler capacity is an imaging technique, increasingly available due to technological advances, that permits point-of-care hand-held ultrasound scanning. Therefore, MSKUS is now introduced into many musculoskeletal disciplines, including orthopedics, rheumatology, sports medicine, primary care, and hemophilia treatment centers. MSKUS permits ultrasound-guided interventions on multiple levels. MSKUS is a rapid, convenient, highly sensitive and a non-invasive imaging method for the diagnosis of cartilage abnormalities, joint effusions, joint bleeds, muscle tears, tendon tears and inflammation, soft tissue masses, and peripheral nerve conditions. It is also a valuable tool to follow joint health long-term by individual assessment of synovial hypertrophy, inflammation and cartilage health. However, training to diagnose and manage arthritic conditions, is required. This CME course will provide online training in MSKUS, enabling providers to use MSKUS as point-of care imaging tool to assist with diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal pains.

Objectives:
Upon completion of this activity, learners should be able to:

• Describe MSKUS basics, physics and knobology
• Describe sono-anatomy of ankles, knees, elbows, hip (including sacroiliac joints), facet joints, and shoulders
• Interpret basic structural abnormalities by sono-pathological findings
• Apply standard MSKUS transducer positions for ankles, knees, elbows, hip (including sacroiliac joints), facet joints, and shoulders
• Describe the Joint Tissue Activity and Damage Exam (JADE) Hemophilia joint ultrasound protocol
• Describe a diagnostic MSKUS recognizing hemarthrosis, synovitis, and structural abnormalities (such as meniscus, tendons, and ligaments)
• Describe cartilage health, soft tissue and synovial hypertrophy, and osteochondral lesions
• Describe techniques and protocols for performing ultrasound-guided injections
• Apply ultrasound-guided needle placement
• Identify sonographic interfaces for accurate needle placement and injections