Shockwave Therapy

Shockwave therapy is also known as Electrocorporeal Shockwave Therapy (ESWT) and uses acoustic waves to stimulate tissue healing, reduce pain, increase vascularization and decrease inflammation.  When the acoustic waves make contact with the tissue being treated energy is released into the tissue resulting in a release of growth factors which then accelerates healing.

Shockwave is administered once weekly for four sessions. Depending on your dog’s condition the benefits may last anywhere from 6 months to 2 years and sometimes no further treatments are necessary. Chronic conditions such as arthritis will generally need follow up treatments that are indicated by changes in your dog’s function.

For most conditions we treat, shockwave is not painful. We are able to adjust the treatment intensity to keep your dog as comfortable as possible during their shockwave treatment. 

Many patients will show improvement after the first or second of a series of 4 weekly treatments. About 70% of patients see very good benefit following the entire treatment course and the remaining 30% are evenly split between some improvement and no improvement. 

Shockwave is delivered through a handpiece that is held against the skin. Because it uses acoustic waves it is necessary to have a coupling gel between the probe and the skin and for heavy coated dogs we will likely need to clip the hair short to make good connection to the skin as well as keep the skin clean after applying the coupling gel.