Well what another busy week, apologies for patients on my Thursday list as had to shoot up to the NEC to spend time with Professor Christoph Schmitz, clearly the most influential academic in Shockwave - MD Full Professor and Head, Extracorporeal Shock Wave Research Unit, Department of Neuroanatomy Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany.

Christoph's talk was ‘Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy on the musculoskeletal system in sports medicine and evidence based medicine’. This was well received and I personally got to spend time with Christoph and managed to bend his ear on a few of his studies.

I have to say its one of the first exhibitions that I have been where other manufacturers of Shockwave machines were present and most certainly raised my eyebrows to some unusual experiences. One practitioner mistakenly believed that he could deliver shockwaves through clothing, whereas in fact castor oil is the necessary medium to allow the transmission of energy into the soft tissues. If the 'learned' practitioners are advocating this as standard practice then it's a worry because the general public will believe the same.

A further worry is that physiotherapists and sports physicians, the people buying these machines are being hoodwinked by price .

There are other cheaper machines with very little evidence to support what they do but they don't produce consistent energy into the soft tissues.

For what we all charge professionally, we should all be using machines that have evidence to support their product and studies in abundance. The Swiss DolorClast has unrivalled evidence from around the world and one only needs to look at Pedro.org to confirm this.

For those who are following me on LinkedIn, there have been two interesting posts this week; one on subacromial impigement and another on Osteo Arthritis of the knee. Watch this space for more info and hopefully Christoph will shoot me details on his treatment for a 3D hamstring injury for a star he has worked in one of the main international football leagues. The results were amazing and he returned to competitive sport 31 days later. That's all I can say at this stage!