Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
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High-resolution ultrasonography (US) can play an important role in studying nerves, as it has several advantages. Entrapments of distal tibial nerve branches can be mapped out or diagnosed with selective anesthetic blocks, and US can guide therapeutic procedures, such as radiofrequency ablation and selective infiltrations of specific nerve branches. The aim of this study was to verify that US is an effective method for accurately locating the posterior tibial nerve and its terminal branches, such as the medial calcaneal branch, the first calcaneal branch, and the medial and lateral plantar nerves. ⋯ On the basis of this work, we can conclude that high-resolution US is almost 100% effective as a tool for identifying the tibial nerve and its branches, enabling the specialist to make diagnoses or perform selective treatments on each nerve branch and even to design surgical interventions by observing the patient's anatomy before performing the dissection.
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To prospectively investigate the diagnostic accuracy and clinical consequences of power Doppler morphologic criteria and shear wave elastography (SWE) as complementary imaging methods for evaluation of suspected local breast cancer recurrence in the ipsilateral breast or chest wall. ⋯ Power Doppler US is unsuitable for discrimination between local breast cancer recurrence and fibrosis. Although the SWE score and SWE maximum elasticity can make this discrimination, the use of these methods to determine biopsy may lead to poorer clinical outcomes than the current practice of performing biopsies of all suspicious masses.